Band name catch your attention? Thought so, it is a bit of a cracker in a time when practically everything but that bordering on the ridiculous has already been used. Solitude Productions have plundered everywhere from The Urals to the Caucasus striking rich veins of doom wherever they cast their drill. However this lot actually come from the capital of Mother Russia itself Moscow and just looking at their name is enough to chill to the very bone. The group have so to date released a trio of demos and if you had not heard of them that will hardly be a great surprise. They started out as a one man project helmed by E.S. but gradually took more members on board leading up to this their debut album.
Frosty keys and piano sound slowly ease into ‘Leave Me’ and if you were expecting this to suddenly fly off in a flurry of blasts you are in the wrong place as this is a slow serenade of thickest doom. The vocals are the craggiest and hoariest one could imagine almost off the human scale as they gurgle away. Many of the tracks here are listed as featuring someone (who is possibly a name in Russia but not to me). This one has Stellarghost joining in and I am guessing adding to the gravid tones of E.S. with some slightly higher backing rasps. As for the music well it plods, I like the piano melody but find the funeral clad doom here quite weary and difficult to (as no doubt intended) find anything upbeat about. Mood is changed slightly as ‘The Woman We Are Looking For’ (this one featuring A.K. Iezer) has a slowly wailing guitar lead running through the sluggish stew of slow pounding drums, as the vocals come back in I realise just by listening to them I am getting a sore throat. Some spoken words add a bit of diversification but this is one of those albums that by the time you get here you may well have already fallen asleep. This is definitely not one of those discs to do anything like using heavy machinery as you listen to it. The weeping guitar tones of Mobius Ring invoke the essence of My Dying Bride and the interlude is a nice mid album piano sonata. Then it’s back to the slow and heartbreakingly sorrowful plod….. The acoustic guitar with wind howling away over ‘An Old Road Through The Snow’ is another nice touch before the last title track epically unfolds over a morass of doom filled beats, dragging you towards the ten minute mark.
I would not say I disliked this album but even at the ¾ of an hour mark it seems to last a lifetime and is seriously hard work. This is bleak and crippling stuff and left me with a feeling that you get when the nice white snow has melted and you find yourself stomping through horrible brown slush, it’s not nice at all and leaves you on a serious downer, just like the music here.
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