Kõdu ‎"Unusta Kõik" CD

The debut full-length studio album by Estonian Black Metal band. Second Wave influenced Black Metal, inspired by Estonian poetry.

Limited 500 copies

Unusta kõik – the debut album from the Estonian black metallers known as Kodu – is one of those albums that adopts a specific philosophy of composition, and uses this to frame the music writing process. Said philosophy is at its most explicit on the closing track ‘Laotus’. A muffled and mutated rendition of a Bach Cello Suite greets the ears, the tonality safely contained and manipulated into ordered sonic forms in this beautfiul piece, only to be torn apart by dissonance and chromatic anarchy as Kodu kick in. But this apparent chaos eventually solidifies into a compositional order of its own. The takeway lesson of all this being that dissonance works best when deployed to warp the agreed customs of traditional music writing, and not as a starting point in itself. Many of the riffs and chords progressions found on this album take a very familiar form as far as black metal is concerned, but a frequent barrage of dissonant artillery and other off kilter chord shapes throw this traditional framework off balance entirely.
The production is clear and crisp, acknowledging the fact that the riffing is angular and changeable, subject to frequent tempo changes and sudden shifts in direction that would be lost if distortion and reverb were applied too liberally. Although the guitars still embody a rawness suitable for black metal, the tone is kept sharp in order to allow for the articulation of the multiple moving parts present in each riff. Equally the drums have an undiluted quality to them; there are no thrills and no lavish reverb, the focus is placed entirely on bringing out the non-linear performance that constantly interrupts itself with unexpected fills and disorientating tempo changes. Vocals are the most conventional aspect of the overall presentation, operating with a broadly familiar black metal flavour, at once aggressive and monstrous.
The strict no-nonsense approach to the mix makes this all the more joyful to listen to. The music shows enough character and a wealth of activity to make any flashy studio trickery superfluous. Which leads to perhaps the most important observation to make about ‘Unusta kõik’; because although this sits squarely in the black metal camp in terms of presentation, this is philosophically a death metal album. The chromatic wanderings that seem to grab each track by the throat and force it into uncomfortable shapes and uneasy pattern formations, the angular, alienating attitude of the music itself, the prioritisation of the interaction between riffs over any atmospheric considerations. All are qualities one would usually favour in death metal. Maybe we should borrow a term from Mefitis and tentatively offer ‘Unusta kõik’ as a “dark metal” album.
There’s a similar project of world building at play here. Kodu prepare the ground by transitioning the listener gradually into their idiosyncratic approach to composition and arrangement, so that by the time the off kilter opening refrain of ‘Kui minna suurele teele’ rolls around we’re completely onboard, and everything Kodu does from then on seems to make sense on an intuitive level. This is complex creativity that writes its own rules as it goes along. The patient and sophisticated arrangement of song structures thwarts the agreed customs of polite society’s musical norms, but also uses these tools of destruction to create a new order and structure of its own. A triumphant debut that is both rewarding and challenging in equal measure.

Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...