Sfumato

Many times in the past, I have mentioned the scene of Stavropol and the quality which makes it special. So recently I received another release with the logo of the scene of Stavropol on it from Not Last Rise, which has the weird name “Sfumato”. The three member band comes from Russia, it was formed in 2007 and the album that I have, is its first full length work which contains four tracks of overall duration of about one hour. The music that they present to us in this release, is a mixture of Scandinavian, fast Black Metal with dark, atmospheric, heavy Black Metal, slow and torturing.

This project could offer another psychological violence to the listener, as it has the characteristic riffs which try to cause agony, terror and maybe the feeling that you sink into a quicksand, slowly and painfully. Unfortunately, only in few parts all the above become reality. The riffs change from fast, Scandinavian to slow, torturing and vice versa, but very few of them achieve to successfully create those feelings to the listener or at least to catch his attention. The huge size of the tracks and their somehow repetitive structure, don’t help also the few interesting riffs to make the difference. So the tracks become tedious and the listener’s interest is lost almost from the first few minutes.

On the contrary, the performance of almost all the instruments is quite good. The guitars deliver with accuracy the riffs and they have a lot of energy, while their sound is distorted. The bass is audible mostly in the slower parts, its lines are not anything special and their style of play creates some kind of uncertainty to the listener. On the other hand the drums are played with certainty, while their lines are quite interesting. The vocals of the album depending on the part, the speed and the atmosphere change from harsh Black Metal screams to heavy vocals which are closer to Death Metal, they are quite expressive and they fit to the music nicely. The lyrics are written in Russian and they are contained in the cd.

Unfortunately, the first full length album of Not Last Rise disappointed me, maybe because the other bands from Stavropol have achieved high quality releases and I expected something better, maybe because most of the riffs lack of inspiration. Whatever it is, the album couldn’t create any other feeling but boredom. The fans of the genre that I described, you be hurt if you listen to the album, you may find more positive elements. The rest of you prefer another of Stavropol’s releases.