adg211288
Colotyphus is a fairly new black metal act out of Ukraine and Остання подорож зневіреної душі (Spiritual Journey of a Forlorn Soul) (2017), which I'm going to refer to solely by its English title from here on in, is their debut studio album. The band was previously the solo project of their vocalist/guitarist Gennadiy 'Monolith' Kovrizhnykh and released its previous releases, a single and EP as his solo project, but they have expanded to a trio of musicians by the time of this album: Roman 'Morvudd' Sapozhnikov on bass and Katerina 'Todestrieb' Katharsis on keyboards, who also takes over lyrical duties. There is no mention of a drummer anywhere, so I presume those are programmed. The album contains seven original songs and cover versions of Drudkh's Summoning the Rain and Glare of Autumn re-done as one long track which closes the album.
The music on Spiritual Journey of a Forlorn Soul is atmospheric black metal with some occasional light symphonic touches, such as in the first track Ruthless Time. The band's sound is characterised by a reasonably well polished production job, by black metal standards that is. We're not talking an excessively raw and/or cold sounding atmospheric black metal fare here. Another notable feature to my ears is Kovrizhnykh's vocals, which are a growl of a deeper variety than is typically heard in the black metal genre, being closer to those of death metal. With that said there are no musical diversions into death metal present on this release, so I don't think this is intentional on Colotyphus' part, but rather that's simply how Kovrizhnykh's growl sounds.
The band's compositions tend towards a mid to long length, resulting in Spiritual Journey of a Forlorn Soul being quite the substantial debut album for the band. Solidly played and composed, their style isn't the most groundbreaking out there but it's professionally done and powerfully delivered. Getting through the over an hour total duration in one go certainly isn't an issue, though listeners may not come away feeling like each individual track made much of an impact. This long journey though, taken as a whole, proves to be very effective which keeps my regard for the release quite high.