Absolutely in line with the unconventionality of all releases weblog I, Voidhanger, Tchornobog is the debut step of the homonymous solo project of Markov Soroka, relatively already known for his work with two other monikers of its exclusive competence, Aureole and Slow (the latter obviously not to be confused with the homonymous creature of Déhà). Tchornobog is a transliteration of Chernobog, a misunderstood Slavic deity, whose only evidence is to be found in the Chronica Slavorum, written in the twelfth century by the German religious Helmold: it seems that the people devoted to this cult were used to put themselves in a circle and pass a sort of chalice, in which were hurled curses that would have been precisely channeled and directed in the right direction by this mysterious “black god”. The music that Soroka pours in this work represents his personal chalice, a container inside which are all forms of extreme metal wrapped in a deadly embrace and made in a convulsive, dissonant, obsessive and, ultimately, terribly disturbing way. In four tracks that exceed abundantly the hour of duration as a total turnover, the young musician of Ukrainian origin, but stationed in the United States, exhibits without too much mediation a form of doom that rests on funeral bases, lashed by sudden accelerations of black death, and almost entirely devoid of any melodic semblance, given the obsessive pace of the instrumentation, largely by Soroka who, wisely, is helped by several guests including the excellent Magnús Skúlason on drums and the guru of doom darker and more fearsome Greg Chandeler, on vocals in The Vomiting Tchornobog and Non-existence’s Warmth. Just this last track seems to offer a minimum of respite to the incessant evocation of pain and evil that the instruments and threatening voices seem to launch without interruption, and this is precisely the cornerstone of the work: a relentless work of psychic erosion that, never as in this case, lives in symbiosis with a musical style difficult to define. Tchornobog is a work of spasmodic intensity, that annihilates and strikes, fatally attracting when with the mind we try instead, rationally, to escape from its lethal embrace: a complex listening and that clearly will not receive favors in an univocal way, but there is no doubt that the good Markov has put on the plate a work that will not leave indifferent.

2017 – I, Voidhanger Records