Alkonost - Дар Саламандры (2024)

Country: Russia
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 30 Aug 2024
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Alkonost are another of those bands who have been around for a long time without me noticing. They formed in Nabarezhnye Chelny in the Republic of Tatarstan in 1996 and have knocked out at least twelve albums, most of them in Russian but with a couple seeing additional release in the English language. This isn't one of them, but it comes a year after an Anniversary Edition of their debut, a previously cassette-only English language album, Songs of the Eternal Oak. The core of the band is founding member Andrey Losev, who writes the songs and plays guitar and keyboards.

What I'm hearing is that all those roles are fundamental here, making him the heart and soul of what this band does. The guitar is a heavy crunch that sets the fundamental tone for everything. It's a rhythmic guitar that's more interested in echoing a beat than delivering a riff and there are few guitar solos to be found. The melodies here are primarily the province of the vocals, which are provided by Ksenia Pobuzhanskaya, but the keyboards often emphasise her when she sings and in moments when she doesn't, they often take over from her.

If I'm reading things correctly, Pobuzhanskaya is the only other actual member of Alkonost, with an array of guests fleshing out the line-up for this album, even though some of them have credits on earlier releases. Vadim Grozov plays the bass throughout, but other duties are split up by song. I see three drummers, with Dmitry Bortsov possibly the most frequent presence, appearing on five of the nine tracks. There are two guest guitarists but only on a couple of tracks, both showing up on Северное сияние, or Northern Lights, and Pavel Kosolapov playing on Оберег, or Amulet, too. That leaves Andrey Tepper as the violinist on Оберег.

I liked this album pretty quickly, even though it plays out in a highly consistent manner, so it's hard to pick out favourite songs. If you like one, you're going to like all of them, but if you don't like the one you started with, nothing else is going to change your mind. Maybe Оберег is notably playful for a couple of minutes, that violin joining keyboards and vocals before the crunch joins in. Maybe the second half of Разожги огонь, or Light the Fire, elevates it through a strong hook, some free flying ethnic-sounding vocals from Pobuzhanskaya and some technical guitar changes. And maybe Солнце, or Sun, has an even better hook. Quite frankly, though, I could easily call out some aspect of every song to say something special about it, without it having any more meaning.

What that boils down to is that this plays best not as nine songs, but as a single forty plus minute slab of folk metal. It's a very easy album to listen to and I've listened to it for the past three weeks as I've been distracted away from music reviews by a hundred other urgent tasks until I finally got it down on virtual paper. However, it's felt just as good every time I've come back to it partly due to having a welcoming warmth to it. In fact, that welcome may be one reason why it reminded me of a song from a short film I've screened at events that's both gothic and steampunk, both highly welcoming communities.

Coincidentally, that film is also Russian, titled Corset and written and directed by Olga Twighlight in 2015, but the song, Set Me Free, is from a German electro-industrial band, In Strict Confidence. Listening to that afresh, the guitar crunch seems very similar to what I'm hearing from Alkonost and their use of keyboards isn't wildly different either, so it's hardly surprising to realise that I'd heard this as both gothic and steampunk, even though it's not really either. What's different are the vocals, because Pobuzhanskaya is emphatically rooted in folk music while In Strict Confidence remain stubbornly gothic.

And that means that, while Losev is the bedrock of this band, it's Pobuzhanskaya who becomes the one who gives it its identity. She only ever sings clean and in a folky voice that ranges from playful soprano down to sultry contralto. The latter is her default voice, but Оберег especially highlights both sides of her range, reminding me of a versatile Russian pop singer called Линда, or Linda, a singer who also dipped into both folk music and goth. I'd love to hear Alkonost cover anything off Ворона, especially the title track.

Clearly I should be listening to more Alkonost. On another day, I might have given this a solid 7/10 because it's a consistently enjoyable album. Today, I'm going with an highly recommended 8/10 as it's become quite the companion over a few weeks and it still feels just as good now as it did on my first time through. A lot of otherwise wonderful albums age quickly but this one feels just as fresh as it always did. I wonder if I'll find the same with their earlier material. I may need to find out. The title translates to The Gift of the Salamander, so, hey, thank you, salamander!