In the world of Halter there is little room for colorful images and good feelings: the reality foreshadowed by the Russian band is steeped in a pessimism that often flows into a raw and bitter misanthropy. Arrived at the second album after Omnipresence Of Rat Race of 2013, the band, if it does not substantially change its attitude towards humanity and its miseries, makes a decisive leap forward from a purely musical point of view, since the death doom bare and dry but also without any particular momentum, of the previous album, gives way to a more elaborate form with several melodic openings or riffs relatively usable, able to attract attention more easily. Nothing new, it should be emphasized, but with For The Abandoned Halter align themselves to the average level of the productions of the genre in their country, which is definitely high. Of the six tracks that make up the album, two in particular stand out: First Snow, which dilutes the basic hardness of the sound with more airy and evocative passages, and Keepers Of Persistent War, which instead enjoys a structure that is in some ways captivating and that is the proof of how much the Russian band is able to do when it decides to partially open to less claustrophobic sounds. But it’s the whole album that proves to be decidedly of another level compared to its predecessor (the incipit of the conclusive Ode To Abandoned is not bad either); all in all, Halter manages to differentiate itself from the other bands of the genre at least on a conceptual level, where an overall attitude in which a certain “pietas” transpires towards those who are the object of an unavoidable destiny, is in this case overwhelmed by a sort of cynical disgust towards a humanity in disarray.
2015 – MFL Records
Mournful Sounds 
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