The Industrial Twilight: Parzival

Monday, June 27, 2016

Parzival - "Casta" [2014]

Artist: Parzival

Title: Casta

Genre: Neoclassical, Martial Industrial

Country: Denmark / Russia / India

Release date: 2014

Track List:

Kalachakra
Kurushektra Purana
Himagni Purana
Airyanem Vaejah Purana
Uttara Purana
Navadi Purana
Ayo Purana
Rudra Purana
Yavashtra Purana
Andra Purana
Regnabit

Parzival was founded in 1999 by Dmitry Bablevsky, who was a member (initially a drummer, then a vocalist known for his unusually low-pitched voice) of several rock bands in late USSR, one of which became popular enough that its members managed to move to Denmark in 1989. In 1992, Bablevsky started a new project called Stiff Miners, which played industrial techno in the vein of "Kapital"-era Laibach. After Stiff Miners have released two full-length albums, Bablevsky decided to abandon the futuristic industrial sound in favour of more medieval neoclassical music. Thus, Parzival was born.

I've read several quite disparaging reviews of early Parzival albums, according to which, the band started as a pretty poor clone of Laibach. However, this album is quite solid, and doesn't sound like plagiarism of Laibach at all. It's a concept work dedicated to the Hindu tradition and the Indian classical music, made with the help of guest musicians from India:

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About this blog

I created this blog mostly because I wanted to practise my English skills, and to showcase the industrial, gothic, punk, metal, neofolk and progressive rock scene of Russia/ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (especially Hungary) in the meanwhile.

As you can see, this blog doesn't take itself seriously enough, but I hope I'm doing good enough with my reviews even if my proficiency in English is limited. Along with the aforementioned stuff from Eastern Europe, I occasionally post some classic and rare albums that aren't to be missed, and generally whatever I want. Other categories of note:

* finno-ugric rarities - various music (including pop) in minor Finno-Ugric languages which I'm interested in because of my heritage. The music from Hungary, Finland and Estonia can be found under the respective categories;

* lo-fi - various poorly recorded demos from before 2000 that are of historical importance. Most of these demos come from the USSR era, so you might want to check out the USSR category as well.

As of now, I try to post only music that has already been made free by the artists themselves, or the rare old releases that are out of print. But if you're an artist and would like me to remove the download links of your work, just contact me using the form below.

Sorry, I don't do reviews by request, I don't have the time. Moreover, I think the bands that feel the need to advertise themselves by sending their demos to as many blogs as possible are usually just plain boring. If you want to contact me for any other reason, use the contact form below.

It should be obvious enough that reviewing anything on here doesn't equals endorsement of artists' personal views. This especially concerns neofolk and martial industrial. It'd be fair enough to say that I have the same approach to the political and religious topics in these genres as Laibach do.

Many of the female musicians featured on my blog are amateur models, and in many cases their modelling work is no less interesting than their music. Right now I'm working on giving it a separate section of the blog (just in case if anyone wants my review to be only about their music and not their looks). The work is in progress, check back later if you're interested.

The title of my blog comes from a song by The Kovenant (album "SETI", 2003).