Band:	Kypck
Album:	Ниже
Style:	Doom metal
Release date:	February 2011

01. Гифарус
02. После (After)
03. Аллея Сталина (The Alley Of Stalin)
04. Чужой (Stranger)
05. Фелица
06. Разрыв (Rupture)
07. Бурлаки на Волге (Burlaks On The Volga)
08. Бардак (Brothel)
09. Товарищам (Comrades)
10. Вальс смерти (Death Waltz)

Bands that are based on a concept are spreading like a plague these days. It's most often interesting because this turns metal into a parallel world, like a city with many different houses and inhabitants. It's getting vivid and at the same time it connects strongly to reality. Well, actually our reality's past and history, when you go from the Roman empire through Germanic tribes, medieval ages, and so on until you reach the time of communism. Where pagan metal is serving the former concepts, Kypck strikes with stories of the USSR. Nizhe is the second album, and second albums are always interesting because it shows whether the band can maintain their high level like this band showed with their debut Cherno.

The term "fast Russian doom metal" is actually quite false, the music is not faster than common doom metal. But in a nice way the band manages to connect the heavy and dragging character of this music with the slow and cold times in the Soviet Union. We have two guitars here and the famous one-string bass of Ylä-Rautio. Those three instruments play together like a trio of old jerks: as if through years of experience they harmonize in a brilliant way but here and there they become a bit grumpy and disharmonious. And this is meant in a positive way because it fills the term "doom" with life. A good example of the way they harmonize is the intro to the opener "Posle (After)," which also appears later in the song again. Concerning the drums, I must say I really approve of the tone they created with them, sounding heavy and hollow at the same time. Erkki Seppänen lends his slavic tongue again to the mic and this makes him the soul of the band concept. He has a great vocal variety; I only cannot judge how good his Russian pronunciations are with the two or three words of Russian I know.

The positive side of this album surely consists of the often lovely melodies, grumpy atmosphere and overall great performance of all the band mates. Sometimes some catchiness is included like in "Allyeya Stalina (The Alley Of Stalin)" The songwriting is also on a high level like one would expect by all those professionals. A bit of a negative touch is that this album isn't one of those I can listen to for too many days without yearning for other stuff; it's like one or two days Nizhe and then I go on with other bands. Compared to Cherno, I find this one on an equal, very good level.

The true highlight for me is the track "Tovarishcham (Comrades)," this one has it all and I think it's my allover favourite Kypck song now. Besides that, especially the already mentioned "Posle (After)" and "Felitsa" are brilliant songs I would strongly recommend. To conclude, this is a very good album, the band maintains their level, plays a bit more with melodies and still strikes like a USSR tank.