Bergrizen. I saw them from afar at the Metal East in their native land, Ukraine, back in 2019. When I checked the band, I saw it was all about the classic aesthetics of black metal with black and white everywhere, album names in German as well a muscled singer wearing corpse paint. If you look at them within the Ukrainian black metal scene, they’re nothing but a Kroda n°2 in less kitsch.
But I was happy to see Bergrizen break away from this silence and from this small death of Ukrainian creativity overall. Especially as they come back with a concept I instantly fell in love with. In his Facebook post Roman Korotkov the live drummer of the band and main compositor of the album introduces it as “war music” and it tells a lot about the context. It is not music that keeps going on its way during the war, but this war itself that has influenced and shaped music. He continues explaining that Orathania is the poetical name of ancient Ukraine and that this album is dedicated to their motherland and its nation. Each song represents an ethnocultural region of Ukraine. As my geography is not so bad, I recognised most regions it is about and it makes a nice road trip. I am passionate about travelling so they just scored another point.
Musically speaking, Bergrizen is slightly drifting away from their cold black metal for folk and dark ambient. Orathania is also an album they qualify as instrumental because although there are some screams here and there, there are no lyrics. Be it intentional or not, I find this idea particularly brilliant. So many things have been said or even screamed into the void, so many could still be but sometimes, it seems that words are not enough or too poor to express the reality they found themselves in. Then would come the idea of showing but again, a lot has been done. So Bergrizen chose to use their power as musicians to make listeners travel without a single picture. This approach is clever and well brought. Let’s now assess whether the compositions please me just as much as the intentions.
The very first listening made high impression, starting with “To the Coast of Bessarabia”. This would be the part just west to Odessa and south of Moldova. Haunting keyboards express the grandeur and power of the Black Sea. We are then moving to “River Ros’ Rocks” that is winding south of Kyiv to eventually join the Dnipro. This beautiful track, well developped, opens up to the enchanting, the fantasy like side of the album. Yet this one could even be connected to the fantastic because there is a light toppling when this charm grows eerie. It is an amazement but what awaits us in those dark waters?
Now starts what I call the “western Ukraine chapter” with “Bucovina Landscapes”. To put it on a map, it is the region around the beautiful city of Chernivtsi and to me, this track reflects the quietness and cosiness of this countryside very well. Comes the more epic “Carpathian Shield of Galicia”, opening and closing with trembitas melody. Trembita is an alpine horn, by analogy it would be like Swiss alpine horn but as you could hear it, it has a much stronger sound. This composition is a success as well, I find it faithful to the colourful Hutsul culture and the momentum the surrounding mountains and nature bring. And we exit this part “On the Way to Khust”, which would almost be a blend of the two previous tracks.
Hopping to “Tavria Grace”, dedicated to nowadays Zaporizhzhia oblast. It is the first composition in which screams appear and also the first being this well structured and diverse that, to my delight, sounds like a song. “Siveria Magic”, around Tchernihiv, follows this same path in a mystical and powerful way.
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“The Winds of the Mines” is purely atmospheric and is the opening of the medieval-fantastic like vibe of this part of the album.”Khortytsia – the Heart of Power” pays tribute to the biggest island on the Dnipro that played an important role in the history of Ukraine and the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and it is felt through the track. The peak of it all is “Spring in Podil”. Thanks to my visit to Kamianets Podilskiy, I know Podil was a historically rich and prosperous region ahead of its time politically and diplomatically wise. I never was good in school, let me have my moment.
Introduced more modestly, “Sloboda Ukraine in Winter” grows as the most powerful and touching track of the album to me. The more classical keyboards contribute and they oddly made me think of Khors. But it somehow makes sense because this track is dedicated to the ethnocultural region englobing a part of Sumy, Donetsk and Luhansk oblast, and most importantly the whole oblast of Kharkiv which is the home of major Ukrainian black metal acts. There are strong and mighty people there and this is a wonderful tribute. The vocals are especially on point, I have goosepumps every time I listen to it.
Orathania ends in a region where one would not like to stay for too long. Well, it is mostly true for the first one. “Polissya Forests and Volhynia Swamps” deals with two places with an extremely tragic past, namely Chornobyl Disaster and several massacres in 1943. Initially, I thought there were two ways to face the Chornobyl disaster as a western European. First, the very direct, in-your-face way with Kzohh’s set at the Ragnard Reborn 2018. They were fully dressed in period nuclear suits and it could barely be more immersive because of all the visual and audio recordings used in background. Unsettling “Welcome to Ukraine” for us westerners, apparently good in some way for the locals since they dared applauding, impressive in any case. The second way is softer through movies and in my case, movies with cute and badass grannies as in “Babushkas of Chornobyl” which is a documentary and “Gateway” which is a fine blend of tragicomedy and fantasy (both are available on Takflix). Then, Bergrizen offers the most honest approach to me, the closest to actual feelings towards these parts of history.
At first, I struggled a little with the brevity of songs and how abrupt they felt during the early listenings. But I figured fairly quickly how to enjoy them and how they make sense all together. Orathania may be a short album but it has a lot to share. And to me, it does it with the same sincerity and reason as people of few words. It seemed like each tool used was specifically chosen and that the composing was balanced just to get the essence of each ethnoregion they paid tribute to. Not grandiloquent, not frugal. I have yet to discover the more regular composition and style of Bergrizen and it may happen sooner than I thought…
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Header image by Yuriy Jurgen Semikov / Jurgen Metal Photography
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