Black Art. Hell Yeah!!! And guess what, it's not even Black Metal. Since I come from the former USSR, I have a tendency to support bands from that region. Unfortunately, with a number of great bands from Russia, Latvia, Ukrain etc, there are also loads of shitty bands coming from these countries. None of this, however, applies to Russia's Mental Home, especially since "Black Art" came out.

What a great album. While the band's previous effort "Vale" was in debt to early Tiamat, "Black Art" has a very contemporary sound. Upon listening to it, an unaware person might think the band is from the mainland Europe. What we have here is symphonic Doom Metal of the highest order. The new keyboardist Michael "Maiden" Smirnoff is a man of considerable skill. Just listen to the majestic keyboard on the opening track "Under the Wing (of Gamayun)". Farther down the album we get beautiful guitar interplays of "The Plague Omen" and "Into the Realms of Marena," melancholic and atmospheric "Winter Art," powerful "Tides of Time," plus other goodies, including a CD ROM video clip of "Pagan Freedom." Good production too. Sergey Dmitriev's vocals are sort of spoken-whispered-rasped, and fit the music well. Great lyrics also, very well written and poetic, courtesy of "Maiden," whose command of English language is very impressive. A lot of bands whose native tongue is not English tend to use a bunch of badly written lyrics full of grammatical errors. With "Black Art" a listener gets his/her hands on some beautiful poetry. Yeah, it's that good.

So there you have it. An awesome slab of symphonic Doom at your service.

© 1999 boris