Grima still lives in darkness.
With their sixth album, Nightside, the wooden owl-masked twins Vilhelm (vocals/guitar) and Morbius (guitar) – both members of Ultar and Second To Sun – accompanied by Serpentum (bass), Vlad (drums, Ultar, Morokh), Valentina Astashova (keyboards, Eoront) and Sergey Pastukh (bayan), mark the start of their collaboration with Napalm Records.
The duo are joined on stage by Vlad Yungman (drums, Ultar, Morokh) and Denis Susarev (guitar, Ultar).
The album opens gently with Intro (Cult), where the airy guitar welcomes the bayan, first very slowly and then quite frenetically, before Beyond the Dark Horizon envelops us in its oppressive darkness. The coldness of the riffs has an immediate effect, as does the impressive vocal diversity of Vilhelm, who offers piercing screams and frightening cavernous growls, but the leads are not to be outdone and they easily hypnotize us as they lead us into Flight of the Silver Storm, which celebrates the return of Folk atmospheres. The sound becomes majestic and we find ourselves once again captivated by the soaring harmonics, the omnipresent drums and only brought back to reality by the finale which leads to Skull Gatherers where a soothing haze of sound appears, but the vocal interventions guide our steps in this dark forest, imposing their sometimes much more sustained rhythm on us. The accordion lends an almost festive tone to the virulent rhythm, but the aggression shines through on Impending Death Premonition, the next composition that reveals the different facets of the band’s palette, and even contains a few moments of mystical clean vocals by Savely Nevzorov and Ilya Panyukov. As its name suggests, The Nightside captures us once again in the darkness, first with a soothing lullaby and then with its gripping riffs, but the track is not a long quiet river and waves of violence come to shake it until Where We Are Lost grants us a small moment of respite. The introduction remains rather mysterious, the rhythmic pattern quickly takes on its most imposing form, and despite a few slightly more accessible passages, we find ourselves violently buffeted by the surrounding tumult, which even the break allows us to anticipate and which sweeps us up to the gentleness of Curse of the Void. As its predecessor, Curse of the Void lets us catch our breath, then nails us to the floor again, integrating jerky riffs, Folk tones and clean choirs before the more dissonant, ambient sound of Mist and Fog. The track is wonderfully aptly named, for it’s as if we were in a haunted forest at dusk, guided by a dying light down a wooded tunnel, where we sometimes find ourselves running for our lives before reaching Outro (Memories of a Forgotten Home), the last escape that confirms we’ve reached the end of the road, and that peace reigns once more.
Grima‘s mad dance has taken another turn with Nightside, incorporating ever more diversity and rhythm into their chilling Atmospheric Black Metal. Whether you’re looking to be hypnotized or to encounter pure darkness, the band will convince you.
95/100
Interview coming soon.