Band:	Who Dies In Siberian Slush
Album:	Bitterness Of The Years That Are Lost
Style:	Death metal, Funeral doom metal
Release date:	2010

01. Leave Me
02. The Woman We Are Looking For
03. Mobius Ring
04. Interlude
05. Testament Of Gumilev
06. An Old Road Through The Snow
07. Вitterness Of The Years That Are Lost

A doom outfit hailing from Mother Russia, Who Dies In Siberian Slush is a band that is right up my alley. For starters, I spent a good chunk of my collegiate years reading Russian and Soviet literature, including the likes of Varlam Shalamov (excerpts from Kolyma Tales) and, of course, Solzhenitsyn. The fact that they play some funeral doom with death-doom influences is a plus as well. Oh, and "Bitter" is right there in the album title.

So armed with a tenuous understanding of the stoic way in which protagonists of tales read, shoulders slumped, trudged ever onward despite the horrible yoke of oppression, I think I was able to enjoy this on a couple levels.

One of my Russian Lit professors once remarked that with newfound freedom and having escaped from Tsarist then Communist oppression, sadly modern Russian literature resembled the crap we get in the west, rather than the amazing and moving works of the proud heritage of Pushkin through the authors who later recounted what they endured in the Gulags.

Perhaps the rumors of that spirit's demise were greatly exaggerated. Perhaps that spirit has simply found a new home?

(And now we circle back to Who Dies In Siberian Slush)

The Bitterness Of The Years That Are Lost captures within their music the same mood of sadness, lamentation, and even beauty of their nation's literary past. The album is pretty much standard funeral doom with some death-doom tossed in, but it's not about the style (or lack of innovation of said style), but rather the capturing of a mood and conveying that mood to the listener. In this regard they excel.

The tracks are as one would expect for a funeral doom album - although the band is into the whole brevity thing, well, within the context of the genre. Songs generally clock in in the six and a half to eight minute range, with a couple shorter, instrumental tracks. All in all, seven songs clock in at the (for funeral doom) lightning fast spin time of 45 minutes.

The general song structures are also fairly standard - sloooooow pace, growled vocals, down tuned and distorted guitars? Some of the guitar melodies/solos are at times cringe-worthy, but those shortcomings are made up by the exquisite use of a piano*. The instrument just feels so stark and naked, particularly in context when played alongside the heavily distorted guitars. It captures the bleak melancholy of the poor, solitary bastard soul pitted against the never-ending expanse of the Siberian tundra and its inhuman conditions. The piano shines also during an interlude piece, conveniently dubbed "Interlude."

The album features guest appearance of vocalists of Comatose Vigil, Amber Tears, Elnordia, and Abstract Spirit.

In closing, this album might not contain any thing particularly out there or innovate to the genre (like, say, Fungoid Stream using a whalesong on their latest), but is still evocative, and thus very enjoyable. Insomuch as one can enjoy doom.

File under: soundtrack to a 40 year gulag sentence.


* May or may not be actual piano? could just be a swell keyboard with a really good piano setting. Whatever. The use of that mode stood out, particularly in comparison to the church organ setting we find in acts like Skepticism or Profetus.