Russia continues to prove to be an inexhaustible hotbed of bands devoted to funeral doom but not always delivering exciting results, as is the case on this occasion with Everlasting‘s debut. The premature split of Comatose Vigil and the tarnishing of Abstract Spirit had in fact left the genre’s imprimatur in the former Soviet Union to interesting realities from neighboring countries, such as the Ukrainian Narrow House or the Georgian Ennui; Everlasting‘s irruption on the scene, however, confirms that funeral is a genre capable of regenerating itself by finding in every part of the globe musicians capable of renewing its magic and tragic beauty. March Of Time possesses the melancholic and delicate tones that the genre takes on when it goes to lap the shores of gothic doom, thus approaching the evocative litanies of acts such as My Dying Bride (especially in the concluding Silence) and Saturnus (to whom ours come very close in several moments of the masterful title track). Here the existential tragedy does not take on the apocalyptic tones of Station Dysthymia, Krief De Soli or The Nihilistic Front; the pain is diluted by the mournful melodies that punctuate the stages of life inevitably headed toward a common and inescapable denouement. Remaining In Ground and The Great Contradiction are the other two pachydermic tracks of an album that makes melodic research one of its main characteristics, and if this, for those who would like to listen to something more disturbing or cerebral, could be a limitation, it is not at all so for those who prefer to indulge in consolatory and illusorily reassuring sounds. A record that possesses rarely encountered emotional peaks, set within a slow pace, broken only by a brief Cascadian black metal-inspired parenthesis in the middle part of the opening track; Everlasting thus perpetuates, in an unexceptionable manner, the recent but well-established tradition of Russian melodic funeral, going right alongside the bands mentioned at the beginning of the review.

2013 – Solitude Productions