Those who think that split albums are, after all, negligible operations in the overall discography of a band, though not entirely wrong in principle, are on this occasion proved wrong by this Immortal In Death, which features, with one track each, a sort of doom international like Aphonic Threnody and the emerging Georgian band Ennui. After all, three quarters of an hour of music packed into just two tracks testifies to how much meat there is in this excellent work in the name of the darkest and most melancholic funeral-death doom. The split opens with the twenty minutes of Ruins, by Aphonic Threnody, a band that includes such well-known musicians in the scene as English Riccardo V. (Dea Marica, Gallow God), Italians Roberto M. and Marco Z. (Dea Marica, Urna), Belgian Kostas P. (Pantheist, Wijlen Wij) and Hungarian Abel L. Never as in this case has the union of these excellent individualities produced a sum of values adequate to the expectations, giving an excellent piece of music that goes beyond the standard level reached with the already quoted bands of origin: Ruins is a veritable summa of these experiences with which, fully adhering to the dictates of the British school, Aphonic Threnody make their own the lesson of decadent lyricism imparted twenty years ago by My Dying Bride, reworking it with the necessary competence and obtaining a result in some ways unexpected, such is the involvement produced by this song, capable of growing exponentially to enhance the peculiar characteristics of the genre in a magnificent finale. The track proposed by Ennui, Hopeless, allows us to compare a more established school with one of recent tradition from the ex-Soviet area: the Georgian duo composed of David Unsaved and Serj Shengelia has two recently released albums to their credit, 2012’s Mze Ukunisa and 2013’s The Last Way, both of excellent workmanship and capable of immediately bringing them to the attention of fans. Compared to their fellow adventurers, Ennui accentuate the melancholic aspect of the composition more, letting the constant combination of lead guitar and David’s deep growl paint a scenario of immense despair; the result is a song as long as it is intense and capable of releasing emotions in a continuous stream, to which it is almost impossible to remain indifferent. This explains why it is worth giving this split, published by the Russian label GS Production, the same dignity as a full-length, not only for its considerable overall duration but above all for the quality injected by Aphonic Threnody and Ennui into the two tracks, prompting me to affirm that, for both bands, we are faced with the pinnacle of quality reached in the course of their respective discographies.

2014 – GS Productions