Day: February 28, 2019

Ukrainian duo Noyde debuts with this ep entitled Surface in which several ideas are channeled, however all gravitating around the doom area. These four tracks show the intention to propose the genre in a way between dreamy and rarefied and to do so the contribution of a post-metal component becomes inevitable; the operation, however, convinces only at times, because this combination combined with a female voice, indeed not too incisive, manages to evoke feelings of melancholic abandon as well as rather tedious moments. It is evident how Noyde‘s work is still in the making and certainly to be focused on: undoubtedly, for example, the opener Vapors is a good song, especially in the first part of an instrumental nature (of which the good Nickolay Romanov is the proponent, with the exception of the keyboards) because Anastasia Lazarenko’s vocal interventions do not convince as they do in the following This Unrest, a cover of Siouxsie and The Banshees doomized in a very effective way, also because the timbre turns out to be precisely more suitable for a context such as post punk than metal. The whiny post-metal of Languishing and the difficult coexistence between the paroxysmal rhythms of the incipit and the dreamy procession of the final part of Wasted mark a second half of the ep that leaves several shadows on Noyde‘s work, although the feeling is that the duo does not lack ideas but rather the ability to enclose them in a more compact container and directed toward a well-defined direction. In my opinion, Noyde would work much better if they devoted themselves to instrumental post-metal with dark and melancholic traits, a solution for which they show they have a flair at several junctures throughout Surface.

2019 – Loneravn Records