Kev Rowland Johann Wolfgang Pozoj is an avant-garde black metal band from Croatia who formed in 2004 by combining two groups, Intoxicate and Grob. They released their debut album in 2006, the first part of a planned trilogy. The second part, ‘Escape of Pozoj’, was released in 2009, after which they were approached by Code666 who suggested that they revisit the concept and possibly re-record some of what they had already released. So, the debut ‘Birth of Pozoj’ was re-recorded and released in May 2011 and this followed in November of the same year. That these guys are tight are never in doubt, but for me it is somewhat let down by the production as the riffs and bleakness aren’t as powerful as I feel that they should be. The result is an album that contains many of the elements that I would expect from this type of music yet isn’t as over the top as I would expect it to be.

I have played it a great deal, and I often feel that I am missing out on something as there are definitely hints of greatness in what they do, but they are too few and too far between although I know that many reviewers have raved over this, yet I feel unable to do so. There needs to be more menace and atmosphere for this to really work for me, but it is still an interesting album and something that black metal fans should investigate for themselves. www.auralmusic.com

adg211288 Escape of Pozoj is the second instalment of a trilogy of albums by Croatian avant-garde/progressive black metal act Johann Wolfgang Pozoj. The album was originally released back in 2009 but like the first album in the trilogy, Birth of Pozoj, has now been rerecorded and released in late 2011. Unlike the two versions of Birth of Pozoj which featured noticeable changes just by checking the track lists against each other the new version of Escape of Pozoj features an identical set of tracks, with more or less the same durations. I would hazard a guess that this means the band were more or less happy with the original album, which I haven’t heard, at least on the compositional front.

Unlike the two lengthy compositions that made up Birth of Pozoj what we have on Escape of Pozoj is four times as many tracks but all much shorter in duration, the exception being the closing Prstima Prelazim Preko Tvoga Tijela... which clocks in a thirteen and a half minutes, though this is still pretty far from the times of Birth of Pozoj’s Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes at 33:51 and Queen Emeraldas at 20:45. That’s what it looks like on the tin anyway, since the tracks transitions are so smooth that the end result sounds like a single track lasting a little under fifty minutes.

Escape of Pozoj, like Birth of Pozoj, has not got the most ‘out there’ sound for something described as being avant-garde, in fact for the most part I’d rather label Johann Wolfgang Pozoj’s music as progressive rather than avant-garde. The music is in the same vein as Birth of Pozoj, which means some traditional black metal rawness to the guitars but with some riffs that don’t really fit the black metal mould and inclusion of ambient parts, which start off the album in this case. The ambient parts are one of the best features in Escape of Pozoj in my opinion, successfully creating a dark atmosphere for the music better than the raw riffs and black metal growls.

As a thematic sequel to Birth of Pozoj Escape of Pozoj succeeds in sounding like a direct continuation of the first album, and I expect the currently forthcoming final instalment Return of Pozoj will do the same, making them sound like one really long album. The quality of Escape of Pozoj is totally on par with Birth of Pozoj to the point that I really can’t call which of them is the superior album. That means that Escape of Pozoj is a solid release that I expect will have a wide appeal among metal fans. I’m not looking forward to hearing the final instalment of the trilogy, Return of Pozoj, the only one of the three than has not been released before, which is currently slated for a 2012 release.

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven, scored at 8.4/10)