Ukraine teams up with Russia for this 12-track split EP as a duo of dark sentimentalists, Starchitect from Kherson, take on a one-man band, Fading Waves from Rostov-On-Don. Surprisingly, there's actually more material here than you'll find on most albums, but then most post-rockers like nothing better than a damn good wheedle.
Fading Waves main provocateur Lex Maximuk is used to playing, programming, singing, engineering and mixing virtually every note you hear, but here he has brought in vocalist Alexey Morgunov and guitarist Artem Bat'kov to help him paint a torrid picture of modern living. Very much inspired by the bleak novels and poetry of Charles Bukowski, as well as the city he lives in, he goes to great lengths on 'Megapolis Depression' to pick wickedly bruised minor notes and repetitive loops to cast the gloom, following it up with an oppressive vocal scouring for 'Lights On Water'. Tinged with sadness, regret and loathing, the music will undoubtedly sap your strength, delivering a series of broken, echoic, Cult Of Luna-inspired laments. Then, recovering rapidly, 'No Way Home' grips hard onto a positive series of riffs and licked drumbeats, providing a defibrillating hit to proceedings, before 'Waiting For End' cuts itself completely adrift as a tinny vocal and a series of solitary piano notes present the check-out point.
The Starchitect contrast couldn't be any more pronounced as rambling, spasmodic post-hardcore and is pitched headfirst into a series of dishevelled cymbal crashes and repeating, childish grungy guitar strikes. Zakharievich "Primus Man" Nikita and Zalozniy "Demoni" Dmitry certainly aren't confined by any genre as they prove by immediately throwing in an 8-minute wedge of timid prog and stoner rock titled 'No It'. The odd spot of gasped death vocal that litters their half of the album seems completely out of place (as does Kasha Mrivoshey's guest vocal on 'Triumph'), almost as if it's been recorded in another time-zone, and the drum production could do with a good spruce up. It takes a few listens but little joys are to be found in the sudden lump of double-time grunt they find in 'Triumph' and the unhinged ravings (reminiscent of FNM's Mike Patton or PTW's Jeffrey Moreira) at the start of 'Things, Happenings, People, Sadness'.
A hit and miss, 2-1 to Russia this one; a match-up that will probably pass unnoticed by many despite it's spotted display of crafty originality.
http://www.myspace.com/fadingwavesband
http://www.myspace.com/starchitect
