Debut for this Russian band dedicated to a form of death doom with progressive traits, as well as a recognizable post metal component. The album winds in the course of seven tracks rather long but the good compositional ability of Below The Sun makes them sufficiently smooth. On the whole, the sound is not too aggressive in its alternation of liquid acoustic and melodic passages to outbursts that are always quite controlled, and these characteristics can be found in the first three tracks and in the last one, perfect examples of how the material should be treated. An exception to this modus operandi is the quarter of an hour of Drift In Deep Space, funeral death doom excellent in its orthodoxy, and the remarkable space ambient of Breath Of Universe. Envoy turns out to be a pleasant surprise as it shows us a band really perfect in exhibiting a sound at times dark and obscure, and in others melancholic and dreamy, all without any smear; the voice is exhibited with a certain parsimony, making the album virtually instrumental, and so it’s not a coincidence that the pearl of the work is Cries Of Dying Stars, an effluvia of only sounds that mix cascadian drives, the best Agalloch and obviously a doom component, not accentuated but however well rooted. If we want, the gap between a song like the already mentioned Drift In Deep Space may seem excessive, but this on the other hand shows the competence of the guys from Krasnoyarsk for the ease with which they approach apparently different sounds. A wonderful album for a band to be put under close observation in the future: Below The Sun are already at very high levels, but the feeling is that they have in their ropes even something better to offer us.

2015 – Temple Of Torturous