siLLy puPPy Obscure band from the northern city of Vitebsk, Belarus, ZARIN has been active since 2005 and officially still together but during the last 19 years has only released this one album WHEN THE TIME GOETH MAD. Consisting of Ivan Shantsilo (bass, vocals), Nikolay Kurilovich (drums), Valentin Antonenko (guitar), Vasiliy Ilchuk (guitar) and Mangler (vocals), ZARIN is a brutal technical death metal band that exhibits high speed twin guitar attacks and blastbeat machine gun drumming like the most crazed in this legion of technical performers. While death metal musically, ZARIN projects a black metal attitude with themes of anti-religion, evil and apocalypse.

This sole release (so far) features 10 tracks at 38 minutes plus and features one of the coolest album covers in the morbid metal world (IMHO) however musically speaking ZARIN is one of a million tech death bands that exhibits a competency level of olympic athlete proportions to play this demanding style of extreme metal but hasn’t quite mastered the art of standing out from the crowd although the band was on the bandwagon of classical music intros, intermissions and other key spots in the album for contrast’s sake.

In fact the opening “And Blood Shall Rain” is a 1 1/2 minute orchestral that leads up to the thundering blitzkrieg bantering of “Apostateness.” While the classical interludes are a pleasantry that offers some breathing room, the tech death tracks themselves are sorta set on the same one trick pony delivery system. Frenzied adrenaline-fueled brutal death metal with techie riffing weirdness thrown in from time to time. Unlike many other bands under the brutality banner, ZARIN offers some clean vocals in midst of the heaviest moments as well as two beastly vocal styles trading off. The instrumental “Awakeness Ov The Demons” is a morbid little dark ambient interlude.

Other than the classical moments, this is pretty by the books tech death metal with the emphasis on tech light as this isn’t a blistering mind fuck extravaganza in the vein of Gorguts or other accomplished tech death bands. Perhaps the most distinct track is the penultimate “…From The Abyss” which features clean vocals as a the death metal lead but trade off with the growls and some interesting sound effects like some echoey reverb from time to time. Also the riffing suddenly changes into a more non-standard generic cookie cutter approach. If only the entire album changed things up a bit more it would go a long way. The closing instrumental “Smothering Curse Ov Pestilence” is a cool creepy outro to fray your hammered nerves even more!

Overall WHEN THE TIME GOETH MAD is a decent listening session as it delivers all the death metal goods and then some but unfortunately sounds like countless other bands in the same league which these days is fairly mediocre. I’m always impressed when a band can competently play this high level of technical playing but as far as my interest being sustained is concerned, ZARIN doesn’t quite muster up the music mojo to take things to the next level. It’s not like they didn’t try. The variations heard including the scattered instrumental sections do serve as something to reorient your senses so you don’t become hypnotized by incessant brutality but it isn’t delivered smoothly and needs a bit of reworking. Promising band at this point but hasn’t released anything since. Perhaps a ten year gap would prove to be the time needed to step it all up. As far as Belarusian tech death is concerned, i much prefer Gomel’s Serdce.