Band:	Vrani Volosa
Album:	Where The Heart Burns
Style:	Pagan black metal
Release date:	October 2005

01. Sorrow
02. Remember
03. Where The Heart Burns
04. Wreck
05. Man Of Iron [Bathory cover]

Well I surely wasn't expecting this, when I first read the names of the songs laying in this album (Sorrow, Where The Heart Burns, etc.) I thought "This must be some Melodic Black stuff for sure"? I was actually wrong, Vrani Volosa indeed has a lot of Melodic approaches, but it also provides the audience with some raw segments and a great Pagan Black Metal atmosphere which surrounds the sight with shivering yet catchy moments.

The album sounds complex in a way; there's even a 15 minutes long tune which delivers harsh yet beautiful fragments all in the same song, this third track begins with a really gloomy and depressive atmosphere, and then after some minutes a breakdown twists the feeling and everything changes from sad and melancholic to fierce and powerful. Then the album also has a weird "almost progressive" structure (too bad they didn't add guitar solos though). So as you can see this is an album mixed with really good overtones here and there, even though the main vein is Pagan Metal.

So yes, the structure of the album makes it sound really complex indeed, but then, the musical execution is not prodigious or complicated, the riffs are catchy but there are no layered chords or anything of the sort, the drumming is really fast and cool but with regular timing and normal beats, etc. now, I'm aware of the fact that not every band has to be exceptional in the execution, but I think when someone has the courage to deliver a 15 minutes track should really polish the execution by adding multi-chromatic chords, asymmetrical beats, etc.

This album is valuable, I'm really impressed by the awesome arrangements, also by the last track (a cool solo lays there) and the wicked as hell atmospheres; I'm sure many metal-heads will find a really good album in "Where The Heart Burns"

Final Verdict: Impressive album when you pay attention to the structures, bridges and breakdowns.

Best Tracks: "Remember", "Wreck".