From The Forest - demo [2016]

Artist: From the Forest

Title: demo

Genre: Post-Rock

Country: Russia
Year: 2016

Track List:

1. Road to Sanda-Gora
2. You Are Here!
3. Sharya
4. Three Angels Are Sent To Kologriv

Nothing is known about this band, except they're from Kostroma and they're playing instrumental post-rock inspired by the nature of their home region and its Meryan heritage. The Merya were an ethnic group inhabiting the territory between modern-day Moscow and Kostroma about a millenium ago. Next to nothing is known about them or their language, except for the fact of their existence, yet they're generally assumed to be Volga Finno-Ugric people, probably related to the Mari people.

The area formerly inhabited by the Merya is well known for having a lot of apparently non-Slavic toponyms with no clear meaning and etymology, which most likely come from some unidentified non-Indo-European languages. Quite a lot of these place names (especially those ending with -ma, -ksha, -khta) appear to come from a single language whose word structure and phonetics are surprisingly similar to what's reconstructed for the hypothetical Proto-Uralic language. Some people assume it to be the Meryan language, although it's highly dubious. This demo is fully instrumental anyway, so the knowledge of Meryan isn't required to enjoy it :)

From what I could gather, the band was planning to release a 5-track EP titled "A Morbid Tale", but there were no news from them since May 2016, so I don't even know if they still play together. Anyway, these 4 tracks are good (especially the last two ones), and I'm definitely going to listen them in my future trips to Kostroma, Sharya, or elsewhere in that region :3

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