Russia is the last frontier of gothic and romantic metal, not only for quantity but also for quality. In fact, there are many bands coming from those lands that in the last few years have authored excellent tests, more or less extreme or anyway imbued with a doom component. The Siberian Aspercrucio belong to this group and, as it happened for other bands from the ex-Soviet area, Nihil Art has contributed to promote out of the borders the work already published by Dark East, making it more attractive with the diffusion of detailed biographical notes and making understandable to the most the titles of the album and the songs, thanks to their translation in English. In fact, the gothic doom of Aspercrucio is sung entirely in the mother tongue, which all in all does not affect its usability, since then in the end it is always the music that speaks and that, however, nowadays getting a translation of the lyrics is quite easy. The main aspect of Miortvaja Voda (Dead Water) is however its being a sort of emanation of the gothic doom of the nineties: romantic, catchy, with a nice solo work of the guitars, a keyboard that leads the dances without being intrusive and the very effective growl of the leader Stanislav Filinov, pleasantly brings back to memory Evereve when they were still led by the poor Tom Sedotschenko, or that Dutch school that had as protagonists, in addition to the most famous The Gathering, less celebrated names such as Moon Of Sorrow, Celestial Season and Orphanage . A recovery of nuances of the past that doesn’t smell stale, on the contrary: the Russian guys are able to give to their sound a remarkable freshness, thanks to effective songs, with well memorized passages, excellently performed and, above all, cloaked in a welcome sobriety (see also the appropriate use of female vocal inserts), in the sense that they never resort to overflowing solutions to try to impress at any cost. Therefore, lovers of the genre will enjoy the presence of tracks of excellent workmanship as Broken Heart, Dreams and especially Silence… Despair, song of over seventeen minutes that closes the album and that shows the ability to offer sounds from time to time dramatic, evocative and full of beautiful melodies.

2015 – Mercy Despise / Nihil Art / Dark East