Откровения Дождя - Эманация Ненависти (CD)

Review
Blastbeat
6/10
29.10.2010

Revelations of Rain. Alweer een doom band. Alweer Russisch. En alweer onder het label Solitude Productions. Doom metal komt in Rusland figuurlijk de lucht uit vallen.
Ik ben benieuwd of dit vernieuwend is, of het zoveelste neerslachtige werkje dat maar door maalt.

Revelations of Rain trapt af met een traag maar melodieus stukje doom metal. Goed gecomponeerd maar niets nieuws. En dan! Een vreemde overgang naar death metal. Snel, hard en agressief. Deze combinatie had ik absoluut niet aanzien komen en haalt ook gelijk de hele sfeer weg op het album. Wat zonde om een album zo te starten.

Revelations of Rain speelt geen traditionele doom/death want er zijn duidelijk invloeden vanuit de black metal scene te horen. Zowaar hoor ik blastbeats op plekken waar dat opvalt. Enigszins merkwaardig voor een doomplaat. Desalniettemin stoort het niet. Wat wel stoort is de zang, die niet helder is opgenomen. Het lijkt haast of er met effecten is gewerkt. Storend, want het lijkt net alsof er een waas over de opname heen zit.

Natuurlijk is er ook licht aan het eind van de tunnel. Revelations of Rain is een band die het vooral moet hebben van de leadpartijen en de passages in nummers. Prima gecomponeerde gitaarlijnen, melodieus en melancholisch! De perfecte combinatie, in mijn ogen, voor een prima pot doom metal. Revelations of Rain brengt niets vernieuwends. Desondanks is Emanation of Hatred een prima werkje geworden. Zeker een aanrader voor fans van Swallow the Sun of Solitude Aeturnus.

Author: Gruis

Review
Forgotten Path
8.5/10

With their last album Russian doomsters Откровения Дождя have become one of my favorite bands in this style not only in the Eastern region, but probably in the whole Death/Doom scene. The third full length, “Эманация Ненависти” (Emanation of Hatred), is probably the most mature album the band has ever done. Though for me it definitely lacks some more dynamic, but the songs and creativity have moved to higher levels.
The first track, “Время” (Time), is the best song for me here. It starts with a melancholic melody - the same, as the entire album is full of. In order to recognize the music, you must know that it still is Death/Doom, made in the best traditions. Melodic parts, brutality and melancholy are the most essential here. I enjoyed the vocals very much, which are absolutely strong and gutsy. And that minute of total Death Metal style in “Время” is absolutely a killer! I admire how the band manages to integrate slow and fast parts. The melodic riffs are also something that is a stronger aspect of the album. In general, there is no need to exclude any song from the context, because all of them are made in a similar way. The album is very solid.
As I’ve said earlier, even though the album is very strong, it still lacks more variety and faster tempos, more aggressive riffs. The first track definitely has all the mentioned aspects and maybe even could be called as the ideal song. But the other tracks need to have more shadows. Though get me right - the album is really great. The riffs are superb, the Russian language fits this style perfectly, and the keyboard parts do not cover the music’s beauty. Maybe the atmosphere and the mood are a little bit too sleepy, but wouldn’t you expect that in Doom Metal?
Откровения Дождя has evolved into one of the leading bands in the Russia Doom Metal scene. If they will keep their direction and have the needed promotion, soon they will be no less good than Saturnus or Kypck. In some aspects they have even bypassed their Western colleagues.

Author: Odium

Review
Heavy Impact
7/10
08.01.2011

Dopo l’album omonimo pubblicato nel 2009, di cui trovate la recensione su queste stesse pagine, tornano i russi i russi Revelations Of Rain, con questo nuovo lavoro intitolato “Emanation of Hatred”, che evidenzia tutte le buone intensioni della band giunta ormai al terzo album. Rispetto al predecessore, questo nuovo lavoro smussa leggermente gli angoli, allontanando gli accenti Funeral delle produzioni passate e dando maggior rilievo alle melodie. Quanto detto, non deve far pensare ad una svolta sonora totalitaria da parte della band, in quanto la pesantezza dei riffs, delle vocals ed il mood triste e rassegnato dominano sempre le tracce presenti. Solo che le aperture melodiche, sempre dal forte impatto emozionale, tendono a guadagnare maggior spazio, come nel caso dell’ottima “Our Cathedral”, il brano maggiormente valido del lotto.

Naturalmente questa piccola svolta, ancora non si plasma alla perfezione con una personalità che ancora risente delle influenze della scuola Death/Doom di matrice inglese, ma lascia trasparire una volontà atta alle aperture, di ciò ne guadagna il possibile fruitore, in particolare se appassionato dei primi lavori di Anathema e My Dying Bride. L’album si lascia ascoltare in maniera piacevole grazie al suo alternare rimandi cupi e poetici fraseggi spogli di pesantezza, da non trascurare qualche ombra Black Metal che fa capolino in un brano come “Antithesis Of Life” e che aggiunge un pizzico di varietà al tutto.

Concludendo, la proposta dei Revelations Of Rain, si mantiene valida, anche se ancora in alcuni punti sembra non esprimersi a pieno regime. La crescita stilistica e compositiva della band, appare innegabile. Il mio consiglio resta comunque quello di concedere alla band una opportunità, anche perché nella propria formalità i russi dimostrano di avere le idee ben chiare.

Author: Andrea Angelino

Review
Metal Revolution
8.3/10
29.12.2010

It’s always a tough job to write of a material that I hardly could identify. It took me like half an hour to find out the name of the band and album title, mainly because it is all written in Russian and not single explanation in English. Nevertheless, hereby I send a little info as a service to our non-Russian speaking readers.

Revelations Of Rain is obviously the Russian metal band (from Moscow) and Emanation Of Hatred is their third full-length release. The album features seven tracks in a highly-uncompromising down-tempo Death/Doom metal manner. On this one the band supposedly is further developing the ideas from their previous two albums, and this collection of songs sure sounds good to me.
Material presented here is very heavy and the vocals most of the time are rather deep, growling and aggressive too. However, the overall atmosphere is predominantly depressive and melancholic leading towards doom instead of death style. This is all about Russian misanthropy with gloom and hate. There’re no electronics, no extravaganza additions, no violins nor romanticism.

If you want to dwell a bit upon the world and life itself, I suggest you at least one listen to this band. There still exists many great masters of the genre, including their homeland, but with their new record Revelations of Rain confirm their status of one of the best Russian doom metal bands.

Author: Bato

Review
Metal Review
8/10
17.12.2010

A masked sky. An immeasurably vast landscape. One lone creature soaring above the earth, confused by the encroaching heavens and rumbling chaos from below. Shifting terrain scatters trees, beasts, life. A great spire of rock jets into the air, animates, takes on life, led by the voice of dominion itself. Crags become fingers, clawing at the path of flight. Our hero ascends, the effort needless. Chaos below severs the spire at its foundation, the would-be victim unintentionally saved from order’s demise. Confidence in the voice shifts to rage at its failure. Our creature flies on in suffocating terror despite the freedom it relishes. This is its existence: a ballet of beautiful discord.
………………….

Funeral doom is much more than a form of music. It is the story of simultaneously conflicting and harmonizing elements; a slow war of aura. Like much of its ilk, Emanation of Hatred, album number three by Russia’s Revelations of Rain (Otkroveniya Dozhdya in their native tongue) is music that transcends typical analysis and criticism, neither following typical parameters nor necessarily creating its own. It therefore requires a different approach to dissect and describe. On top is either a soaring, methodic and minor-key lead guitar or isolated sparse clean notes, existing within a vast space dominated by crushing rhythm guitars and drums. As that which is below attempts to join that which is above, rhythm and lead temporarily break the mold to become melody and countermelody, only to eventually return to their original state.

Revelations of Rain, like many of their funereal brethren, employs this method to first create an atmosphere. Their sound reaches to the roots of Thergothon by way of Ahab’s melodic layering, resembling a Shape of Despair stripped of their symphonic elements. The mood comes first, a unique voice comes second. On Emanation of Hatred, that means also employing the flowing melodic tendencies of Finnish doom/death or the occasional My Dying Bride-styled riff. Deep death metal vocals are often replaced by a rage-fueled rasp, while keyboards provide an airy backdrop. There may be a higher number of influences than is typical, but nothing, not even the slightly higher tempos or occasional blackened blasting (opener “Time”), can take away from this record’s sense of all things funeral. Mood first, uniqueness second.

Structure third. If there has been one criticism lobbed at funeral doom that could also be placed at Revelations of Rain’s feet, it is that certain bands leave out this third step and get away with it. A few mid-album tracks certainly come close to committing this sin, resembling strewn-together leftovers that the band was not able to shape into a full opus. In fact, nearly half of the album seems more like a novel with a phenomenal setting and only a shallow story arc. But if this fault were in any way critical would I have been inspired to get all faux-poetic on you above, or would that favorable score be written up there? No. The truth is that no one has ever created a mold of funeral doom songwriting, and this remains one of the genre’s most appealing traits.

Despite Emanation of Hatred occasionally drifting away from compositional perfection, Revelations of Rain excels at the most important factors of funeral doom: freeform mood, a sense of claustrophobia despite the existence of immense space, and melodic unease. When they do go the extra mile and compose something truly profound, such as closer “In Expectation of Awakening” or album cornerstone “Antithesis of Life,” it just gets that much better for those of us who dare to fly above these harrowing lands.

Undoubtedly recommended for the funeral faithful, and willfully pitched at melodic doom/death fans as well.

Author: Zach Duvall