A year after their excellent debut album, Georgian band Ennui reintroduce themselves to the attention of funeral doom fans with a new work released again under the aegis of Evander Sinque’s MFL Records, one of the main protagonists of the Moscow scene. The Last Way, right from its stunning cover, leaves no room for overt doubt about the overall mood of an album that represents the natural evolution of its predecessor, Mze Ukunisa. David Unsaved, accompanied also on this occasion by his partner Serj Shenghelia (in the spotlight a few months ago with his death doom project No Regrets), confirms himself as a musician of great talent as well as innate sensitivity: his interpretation of funeral marries the most melancholic strand of the genre but all in all partially distances himself from the Russian school, reserving to keyboards a role of mere accompaniment and going to place himself in a compositional sphere rather close to Evoken, although understandably something is still missing to reach the level of the American masters. An hour and a quarter of dulling pain, diluted only by the frequent forays of a lead guitar capable of weaving melodies laden with pathos, is the dish, indigestible to most but delicious for a select few, reserved for us by Ennui. Never more than in this case does the presence of a self-titled track stand as a band’s authentic musical manifesto: the second track Ennui, standardized at fifteen minutes in length, is the track that more than any other shows how much the band has reached a compositional maturity that allows it to naturally combine the slow, pained pacing of the sound fabric with gripping melodies. In the rest of a work that shines above all for its compactness, however, mention must also be made of the splendid Loss, a track with suffocating atmospheres yet always ready to thin out to allow some timid ray of light to manifest itself in a context dominated by leaden tones. Considering that, barring errors or omissions, I had been the only one in our parts to talk about Ennui on the occasion of their debut album, I was particularly keen on David and Serj’s confirmation of the qualities displayed at that juncture, and I must say that expectations were not disappointed: The Last Way is a step forward compared to Mze Ukunisa, particularly in the aspect of personality, and makes one reasonably believe that this is not a point of arrival but rather the milestone of further growth.

2013 – MFL Records