Recorded by TR (Thy Repentance) in 1996 A.S.
Sound reconstructed from archive master-tape in 2003 A.S.
great atmospheric black metal release...
The album "Through the Twilight Eyes of Frost" was recorded back in 1996, and it was a serious claim for that time, especially for the Russian underground. Of course, now such stuff doesn't surprise anyone. Broadly speaking and smoothing out the bumps, Thy Repentance can be compared with early Summoning – only instead of the subject of the Middle Ages, Tolkien's mythology and so on, the subject of Siberian shamanism and the Ural nature is used here. Whatever the case, the thought about such a subject is prompted by the very first song "Blood for the Soil" – some kind of an industrial-ambient-noise mix with shamanic howls and murmurs. This opinion only strengthens, as the album progresses.
Keeping this intro in mind, it should be noted, that the emphasis of songs on the album is shifted from black metal to (as it is now called) an experimental kind of music. Consequently, as contrasted with Summoning, there is no "grandiosity" in the music of Thy Repentance, and they are also bad with epicism. "A dull rainy atmosphere" mostly reigns, I would say. Right, sometimes it turns into a funeral atmosphere.
The vocal parts are responsible for such a perception of music in no small way. For the most part the vocalist hisses and whispers something, sometimes he tries to sing in a clear voice, and at least in the sixth song "Wizard and Witch" he does it pretty good. Also in the "black metal-ish" parts of several compositions he utters an almost true screaming, sometimes even climbing into hysterical notes.
That's the thing, that fairly often Thy Repentance make it clear that they can teach a painful lesson, and crank out fast, almost pure black metal. However, such "true black metal statements" turn out to be short-lived. As a rule they ("statements") confine themselves only to the beginning of the compositions: the third "Moon Roots of War", the sixth "Wizard and Witch", the eighth "Umbra", the ninth "Ural Twilight Autumnalias". The tenth song "New Scene - My Snow Funeral Curtain" stands out of atmospheric / melodic black metal, cultivated by Thy Repentance in the listed songs, it's almost raw black metal, something in the vein of early Carpathian Forest, if I'm not mistaken. Well, there is even a blastbeat-almost-grindcore attack in "Wizard and Witch" and "Ural Twilight Autumnalias", or rather, quasi-blastbeat, because the sound of the drum-machine destroys everything – it sounds like a clacker.
To make the listener understand once again that "true black metal" is not their path at all, Thy Repentance dilute some of their "black metal" compositions with lyrical insertions including an acoustic guitar and female vocals ("Moon Roots of War" and "Wizard and Witch"). But such passages break the songs more than make them interesting, it is most noticeable in "Wizard and Witch". Perhaps the structure of these songs isn't been thought through.
The ambient component in the Thy Repentance music is mostly inspired by Mortiis of course, the beginning of the third song "Moon Roots of War" certainly brings to mind the (early) works of this Norwegian artist. Although the fifth song "When the Sky Is Dark Yet" is more in the vein of Wongraven – such an upbeat melody in electronic style, mixed with quasi-folk. This very relaxing composition even stands out of the general atmosphere of the album. The same can be said about the final eleventh track – a kind of optimistic vignette in industrial style, but it's rather meaningless I think.
The most interesting (for me) compositions on the album are also out of tune with its style, but by no means out of its atmosphere. The fourth song "Gliding in Ice Fog" is excellent militant industrial with shamanic howls. The monotonous, inexorable, oppressive composition – surpassingly! The main riff reminded me the one from "Cthulhu Okkupation" by Cthulhu Biomechanical (well, this is the later recording, but I dare to assure you that none of Cthulhu Biomechanical heard "Gliding in Ice Fog" back then). The seventh song "Flowers of Triumphant - I Hate Them Again" impresses with its decadent and depressing atmosphere, and, umph, how shall I put it, in my mind's eye this is how the breathing of a dying troll should sound (just in case: trolls don't breed in the Urals). A really effective track, which may seem to be insignificant at the first gaze.
Well, the recording is bad. Very bad. The guitar squeaks and creaks, so the guitar parts often cannot be spelled out at all, but, as it should already be clear, the guitars by Thy Repentance don't have the same fundamental value as in case of Summoning. At the same time, the keyboards also cannot be called the main instrument for project, moreover they sound somewhere at a distance, as if they were break away from the body of the composition. The drum-machine is muffled and barely spelled out again, it's a major weakness of this work.
Sample:
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