INTRODUCTIONTEXT!!!
Very often people not familiar with the more fringe variants of metal (be it black or death metal, grindcore or drone metal) always associate music like Eoront’s as nothing more than pure “mashed up sound washed away by the tide” - at least that’s what my wife always says. And indeed for the uninitiated the music of the Siberian black metal band could be nothing but a whirlwind, an amalgam of chaos and noise or just painful pulp.
Nevertheless, these lines are for those who know something about black metal. Maybe not about Eoront, but that will probably change when listening to their new album Gods have no Home which was released digitally at the beginning of November and which will see physical releases in December 2020 (CD/tape, can be found on the band’s Bandcamp) and March 2021 (vinyl on Casus Belli). The first association that comes to mind is The Ruins of Beverast, Fén or Saor because the Russian band has a knack for incorporating some folk elements into their sound just like the giants from Scotland or Germany. If you notice a similarity to fellow Russian project Gloosh then you have proven an excellent taste and ear because: Gloosh is another project by Eoront member ‘Foltath Eternum’.
One should note the beautiful artwork which was done by Vladimir Prokofiev and which shows a winter scenery at night with a human figure huddled close to the fire which is the only source of light in the middle of an old, dead forest with a few anthropomorphic trees behind the freezing human. This figure plays a major role for the record, he personifies a nameless god in rags who wanders around the world. The band says “He spends the night under the open sky, making a fire in the gorges and sheltering from the wind under a low bush.” While traversing the cold world he passes villages, people but also forlorn huts recaptured by nature and its arms. This last metaphor is another parallel to Gloosh but also to Fén with the human seemingly intruding upon nature or where we witness nature being able to drive away the remains of a human occupancy. In the parallel universe created by Eoront, mankind is seen as a source of evil brought into the natural world.
However, coming back to the wanderer, the nameless god. In Flotath’s universe, Gods, unlike in Greek mythology, have no home but are constantly searching for one. They are always looking for a home. Here, we can see the parallel to human life, most of us are perpetually searching for a place that doesn’t exist, a home. This might seem absurd but if we are honest, how deep can our roots be, when we are living in a world where nearly every second marriage ends in divorce with children suffering from split families? Not every house is a home. Interestingly, Foltath only wrote the lyrics to one of the songs, all the other lyrics are texts from Russian poet Max Voloshin. This must be noted: Eoront is able to find lyrics within the oeuvre of a long-dead Russian poet and incorporate them into a story of their own. Voloshin, a Symbolist, is known for being a supporter of humanist ideas who also opposed the idea of communism because he wanted his contemporaries to first of all the others as humans and not primarily as citizens / revolutionaries or friends / enemies. He recreated the semi-mythical world of the Cimmerii which was based on the place Voloshin lived in at the time, Crimea.
When listening to Eoront, one must also note the musical versatility – this is not just a pap of sounds but a very well-defined black metal record. One will find nice speed changes with a lot of variable tempi – from stormy blastbeats to slow doomy passages. The mood is dark but not hopeless (no search is hopeless) with the highlights of the instrumentation being the flutes by Elena Korenevskaya and the violin passages by Evgenia Antsiferova. These two really turn the folksy parts into the must-remember moments on Gods have no Home.
If you like your black metal charged with a philosophical background and some very earthy tones, blackened in thought and sound – then Eoront is a very good choice for you.
