Olhava - Frozen Bloom (2021)

Olhava is a Russian band that is always somewhere there when I think of blackgaze/metal music from the East, I remember listening to Ladoga last year and how close it was to be posted about on this blog. Finally, with their fourth album Frozen Bloom, I have an occasion to mention them and their fantastically overwhelming music here.

The band admits to changing their modus operandi a bit, having two of the four massive tracks here "traditionally storm-like blackgaze passages" while the other two "are leaning towards more meditative drone experience". It is opened definitely with the former as The Queen of Fields makes a beautiful, in a rapid and heavy way, stream of post-metal music in an ethereal and sacral-like form. The feeling it gives is similar to visiting huge cathedrals the sheer scale of which brings the sense of fearful awe. This is what blackgaze should sound like and the Russians nailed it. The same is true for Frozen Bloom I, a shorter track but not milder one in the slightest.

They are separated by guitar ambient/drone-rich Adrift that gives not only a break from the hurricane of loudness but also, as was meant to be, a way to use the music for meditatative self-reflection. This all is inspired by the sudden changes that happen between winter and spring when early flowers can be surprised by the reappearing cold and "a sudden shift in temperature can leave them petrified and frozen back again like being punished by the Queen of Fields". And everyone can draw a reflection about their lives from this as well.

Frozen Bloom costs 8.99 USD.

Check: The Queen of Fields

Country: Russia

Genre: massive blackgaze

  

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