The Industrial Twilight: Second To Sun

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Second To Sun - "The Black" [2018]

Artist: Second To Sun

Title: The Black

Genre: Black/Groove Metal

Country: Russia
Year: 2018

Track List:

Ladoga Master
The Wall
Chokk Kapper
Vasilisa
Region 13
The Fool
Mrakobesie pt. 1: Divine
Mrakobesie pt. 2: Letter
Mrakobesie pt. 3: Hunger
Mrakobesie pt. 4: МК-ULTRA RU
Heaven Sent (Bonus Track)

Every metal blog I'm reading seems to have reviewed this album by now, so... #MeToo :) This is the re-release of the previous album "Blackbound" by Second to Sun, but with vocals performed by Gleb Sysoev (ex-Deafknife). Deafknife were one of my favourite Russian post-black metal bands, so I had high hopes for this album.

"The Black" is certainly different from "Blackbound", not only because of the vocals, but also because of its more aggressive approach. Looks like the band finally found the right proportions for their mix of (post-)black and groove metal. The lyrical themes remain usual for S2S: both real life horror stories and the mythological ones taken from the folk tales of the Russian North and the minor Finno-Ugric peoples. The lyrics, however, are the weakest point of this album: they generally appear like they were written by an edgy teenager with little to no poetic skills. While this isn't going to be a big problem for the listeners that aren't Russian speakers, I still wonder why the quality of lyrics is so poor while the project's mastermind is talking a lot about how he strives for the world-class production quality of his music. Anyway, the stories behind the music are fairly interesting. Enjoy:

No comments:

Post a Comment

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).