Remmirath ‎"Polis Rouge" CD

A joint release with Sabbathid Records. Released as an profi CD with full-coloured booklet.

This is such an underrated masterpiece. From Slovakia. Released in the year 2008, I had this in my collection for a while but only recently got a chance to throw more light on it, having realized myself its longevity and relevance. This stuff predates bands like Oranssi Pazuzu and whatever fancy crap that gets put out under the sub-sub-genre of shoegaze or whatever. Unlike such stuff, Remmirath on this album still plays a firm and strong style of black metal with influences ranging from the Swedish bands like Dissection to everything in between and then to the Slavic bands from the Russian-Ukrainian region, just like how its country is placed.
Every song is an experience in itself, Replacing the Sun is the best example – it has various levels of epicness and so many different influences all in one song. It’s got this beautiful psychedelic solo start leading to the pompous blowing of horns, or so it sounds, followed up by standard but beautiful black metal riffing, acoustic break, and so on and so forth in its own appropriate way. That’s just one song. Like this so many songs add their own to the experience, sometimes incorporating some completely unexpected parts, eclectic influences and yet they are part of the whole thing, somehow. Without them the album wouldn’t be the same – there would be something missing for sure.
The only drawback, and a glaring one, is the inclusion of the utterly execrable track La Figurine Plastique which is industrial-pop something. Ugh. But that’s just a few minutes from an album that goes on to 49 minutes, a joyride in different cultures, different styles and yet certifiably black metal, not like those namesake bands or styles which have too little metal influences to even warrant a sub-genre classification. This is eclectic while remaining black metal, which is what I like, and that’s what the band has peddled in in the past, so it’s not completely out of the blue, clearly there’s experimentation and that’s groundbreaking.
I can go on to dissect almost every song but each one is so different in its demeanour than the other, be it A Little Trip to the Stars or Rainy Friday, I have to actually go back to each one to enjoy its moments, which is just terrific. Few albums afford that. Usually good albums have that one or max two song appeal, but this album is full of them. It’s like ‘Tales from the 1000 Lakes’ where you’re hard pressed to play one favourite song, there’s Black Winter Day and there are five more. Such albums stand out in your memory and your collection.
Five years on, this album sounds just as fresh and relevant, because it’s doing something original, or trying to. It’s not a new genre, but it’s a new take, a bold one. Skeptics whine, find faults, but later eat their own words because every groundbreaking or forward-thinking album had to face that even back in the day. History will see it otherwise. Here’s a band from Slovakia with an album that few fail to grasp its timeless and legendary appeal. Not if they listen to it first.

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