The Russian Revelations Of Rain are actually, in their country and in other nations that use Cyrillic characters, known as Otkroveniya Dozhdya, and the use of an English-speaking moniker, as is the case for album titles, is a simple ploy for faster brand assimilation, since, in any case, all albums and related tracks are titled and sung in the native language. The band, originally from Podolsk, is already on its fourth full length and has always distinguished itself on previous occasions for good average production destined, apparently, to remain, however, caged among the multitude of other bands that, especially in the former Soviet area, devote themselves to extreme forms of doom. This record, however, constitutes a real thunderbolt, and from the very first notes one senses that Deceptive Virtue will not be able to be derubricated as an ordinary work: the Russian quartet puts forth a hypothetical summation of the best of the holy monsters of the gothic death doom scene, taking its cues from the obvious My Dying Bride, the equally predictable Swallow The Sun, but also drawing on the innate melodic sense of Saturnus and, in certain slower passages, the sorrowful melancholy of Ea. The fifty minutes through which the tragic lyricism of Revelations Of Rain unfolds leave no doubt that this record must necessarily become part of the collection of those who love this genre of music: starting with the splendid opener Chernye Teni, passing through a masterpiece track such as Dekabr – Chast and the subsequent Mezhdu Bezzhiznennymi Beregami which, I don’t know how much by chance, in its final part turns into the ultra doom version of Shadow Of The Hyerophant by master Steve Hackett, and arriving at the solemn drama of the concluding Jestetika Opustoshenija, there is not a single dull moment in an album that, frankly, has the only fault of retaining those indigenous characteristics that will make its popularization outside the borders of the former empire more complex. Yuriy Ryzhov’s magnificent guitar touch constitutes the ideal viaticum for tackling this umpteenth, tortured navigation through the deep and boundless seas of pain and melancholy.

2013 – Solitude Productions