Track List:
- Yavas // Явас
- Thong // Плеть
- Windrey // Виндрей
- Dubravlag // Дубравлаг
- Inewed // Иневедь
- Partsa // Парца
I've already written a lot about music from Mordovia, but not much about metal, let alone black metal. This band is a very interesting discovery coming from that very non-metal region, and plays straightforward black metal with a healthy dose of punk (as they have described their sound: "an amalgam of classic black metal riffs and crust punk rhythms in epic compositions with a shifted center of gravity", whatever it supposed to mean). The lyrics draw inspiration from both the local mythology (and I can't think of any other metal band who does so) and the history of the prison system in the foresty northwestern parts of Mordovia which is still operational today:
"Potma was born inspired by the wealth of opposites in the forests of the
Mordovian Gulag. After spending several weeks among prisons, impassable
forests and swamps, the engineer for the maintenance of distance
education systems for prisoners returned home spirited beyond belief. It
is hard to say whether it was a conspiracy of Mordovian pagans, stories
of prison officials, or the age-old repressive apparatus that had
influenced so much on the young man's mind, but he devoted the next few
years of his life to giving shape to those visions that had appeared to
him on the spur-track of Dubravlag.
So the black-metal spirit is already born, it embodies the metaphysical
abyss in the Russian consciousness, filled with the echo of the
repressive apparatus in the forest of Zubova-Polyana. We all contribute
to this. We will all go through it, going beyond the Edge"
The vocals are surprisingly intelligible (for the standards of black metal at least), and there are some backing female vocals as well. Overall, this EP is easily one of the best black metal releases I've heard recently, and a breath of fresh air in a genre that's currently overcrowded by low-effort bedroom projects. Potma also are reported to be a great live band, so I hope to enjoy seeing them live at some point in the future.
