TCHORNOBOG — Tchornobog (review)

TCHORNOBOG — Tchornobog album cover Album · 2017 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Nightfly
Reviewer’s Challenge entry Dec 17.

Markov Soroka clearly likes doing things on his own having released music under various solo projects including Aureole, Slow and Enternium to name a few, none of which I’m familiar with by the way. From a bit of research it’s apparent and not surprising that he has a liking for the more extreme sub-genres of metal from black metal, doom and also death metal. Tchornobog is his latest where he brings in elements of all three.

This self-titled debut album for Tchornobog only contains four tracks but they’re all pretty long, the longest being opener The Vomiting Tchornobog (Slithering Gods Of Cognitive Dissonance) which breaks the twenty minute barrier. Much of the time death metal takes the driving seat where he enters the realms of Australians Portal with an incredibly dense wall of noise approach. A few plays are required before the riffs reveal themselves, often getting lost in the murk, but at times they’re pretty inventive displaying a pleasing dose of dissonance. Soroka writes and plays everything bar the drums, piano, sax and trumpet (the latter three only briefly appearing) and perhaps therein lays the problem. With a few band members to bounce off he might have had someone to tell him that some of these compositions outstay their welcome and a bit of trimming might have been in order. Being a prog fan as much as metal I’m all for long songs but there needs to be dynamics and plenty of musical twists and turns for it to hold the interest. Here there are light and shade moments amongst the apocalyptic barrage but all too often a part outstays its welcome, even on some of the stronger moments and at times where it wanders a bit aimlessly I found myself losing interest quickly. This is particularly true on Non-Existence’s Warmth (Infinite Natality Psychosis) which seems to take an eternity to get going. There are moments however where it’s pretty good, occasionally very good, particularly on The Vomiting Tchornobog, the best track on offer with a compelling collection of blackened death metal riffs injected with some well-placed doom adding variety. My former criticisms of aimless wandering apply here too though to a lesser extent. As this is the first track though it’s a little disappointing that we’ve already heard the best this album has to offer with another forty minutes plus ahead of us.

So overall then, a good album with each piece having its moments though none are totally satisfying as a whole making it less than essential listening. Having said that Soroka is not without talent at creating extreme metal and I’d certainly be interested in checking out some of his other projects as well as any future Tchornobog releases.

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