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I got hooked on Svrm’s new album, Занепад, from the first song alone, so I had to go and bug the Vigor Deconstruct folks until they gave me the rest of it. The album is actually pretty short by recent black metal standards--just 5 songs coming in at 21 minutes--but it feels much more expansive than the running time suggests.
Other than a second member providing some brief acoustic passages, Svrm is one-man Ukranian black metal. Google translate tells me the title means “Decline,” and the other song titles (at least the ones that Google didn’t hilariously butcher) are things like “In Hell” and “The Road to Death.” So yes, definitely bleak, but Svrm falls into an area of black metal that I’ve been calling, at least in my head, triumphant black metal. A good comparison would be Vanum’s Ageless Fire from earlier this year. That one is one of my personal AOTY, and Svrm pulses with the same kind of energy. Yes, Svrm’s vocal content is probably pretty bleak--it’s described as “rooted in Ukrainian lore,” and that’s a country that’s had a rough time since World War II.
But in spite of the pain and melancholy, there’s a feeling of restless, indomitable energy that comes through. If the last track is “The Road to Death,” then the music fights every step of the way. That track has drawn me in for repeated, end-on-end listens. The distorted, choral-like electronic effects that open the song give way to full-throttle second-wave BM, with that extra kick of defiance underneath, especially in the raspy shrieks right in the front of the mix. Another quieter interlude breaks in later, turning the song into a five-minute mini-epic that I get a little bit more from every time I listen.
I know it’s too early to start my best of album list for 2020, but I don’t care. I just found the first contender.