Hailing from Minsk, the five essences that form Ciemra satisfy the hunger of darkness with their debut album The Tread of Darkness.
The album opens with the slow, purposeful ‘Ciemra’ and really gives a great indication of the bands musicianship, the solos are well crafted behind a smokescreen of severity as the track moves its focus into the more atmospheric, a great start which is followed by my highlight track of the album ‘Four Riders’ embedded in melody with a cold undertone.
As the album progresses into tracks ‘Vomiting Void’ & ‘Call of the Ancestors’ Ciemra really show off their diversity from hellfire fury to Carpathian bleakness, the essence that runs through this album is a primordial one that manages to evoke varying soundscapes with each individual offering, again this highlighted by the spoken word start and complexity overall of ‘War’
For a debut album there are an absolute plethora of tracks that stand alone as standouts take for instance the brutality of ‘A Night for the Death’ paired with ‘Winter’ an absolutely wonderful combination of tracks and easily my favourite part of the album overall. This is emphasised even more with the addition of ‘Serpent’s’ and album closer ‘Where the Eyes Close’ which laden with despair.
Overall this album just gets better with each listen and every time I pick out another highlight, it’s very well thought through and crafted fantastically, easily worthy of anybody’s collection and I honestly hope this album gets the attention it rightly deserves.
The Tread of Darkness is available via Avantgarde Music
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