Brutalism

Russian prog-death death bands are quite rare, even more so with female vocals. Don’t let that immediately put you off. Sofia Raykova sings a range of clean to the downright rotten taking much inspiration from Arch Enemy’s Angela Gossow. The band themselves obviously listen to this band and fellow progressive deathsters Opeth with a mild hint of Control Denied. This album really surprised me upon first listen. After numerous plays, this is not an album that you can listen too once, you need to replay it over and over again and each time you gain a deeper understanding of Tantal’s music whilst it throws a curveball at you. ‘The Beginning of the End’ is over an 8-minute epic, but I must say I prefer those gruff vocals, the clean stuff is ok, but sounds a little too weak. Musically there are no complaints whatsoever, riffs galore and a cool attention grabbing arrangement. The Neo-classical intro to ‘Controlled By Hate’ gives up the ghost and is slaughtered by the continuation of a heavy theme. Pounding drumming and fretwork that would make some guitar virtuoso’s weep at the skill possessed by these Russians (the clean vocals work for me in this tune) power ahead and begin to immerse you in all the glory being played out.

The artwork is pretty chaotic and at times hard to fathom what is actually being depicted from jpegs on the internet, even though drawn by famous artist Gustavo Sazes, you will have to buy the full version to appreciate this more. As my friends once said when we were teenagers, if you can’t read the logo then the band must be good! Careful viewing reveals a clever artistic approach with the band logo. In general though, it always amazes me when I hear a band mixing it up with such class and professional musicianship, Tantal have both these qualities in abundance. Whilst bands like Opeth took a while to gain popularity, as is the case with many bands, here you have group that cries out for general consumption.

This is an interesting release and worthy of recommendation to progressive death fans. Russia has a hidden gem, that gem is Tantal.