My quest for Russian metal continues, as I promised. On the menu this time is the latest album of Russian heavy metal band Oratoria, ''Время понять'' or ''Time to Understand'' in English. This band managed to surprise me with their music (which is good, because I'm fed up with unoriginal artists and music), but not in the way I was hoping for. Let me explain...
Oratoria plays good ol' traditional heavy metal, as simple as that, nothing more, nothing less. So you'd expect one ass-kicking headbanging performance, right? Well, you ain't gonna get it. The feeling that Oratoria leaves on the listener is everything but typical heavy metal: calming and soothing. This doesn't mean that their music is lame or boring, because it isn't; the riffs are proper heavy fucking metal and the solos are short but tasteful, so nothing on metalness department to be complaint. There are three aspects of Oratoria's music that in my mind create this rather awkward impression - the vocalists (there are two of them - Ivan Demichev and Alexey ''Tween'' Emantayev, they are guitarists as well), the drums and the choruses. The vocalists aren't that talented, I mean they can sing, but their range and depth is very limited, so the vocals are mellow and unagressive. The problem with the drums is their snare - Roman Leonov is obviously a well-skilled drummer, but his snare sounds very thin, and that's something I really don't like on a heavy metal album. I love bombastic drums, as heard on ''Painkiller'', ''The Inner Sanctum'' etc, and booming drums would certainly give a hell of power to this album. And now, the most important - the choruses. Usually chorus is a boiling culmination of the song, but here, instead of that, the choruses bring yet another dose of smooth, tranquilizing melodies accompanied by some atmospheric keyboards. Totally untypical for traditional heavy metal, it almost feels like zen.
But, even though you might've concluded from my previous exposition that I hate this album, I don't. No, all of this mellow songs are actually very good, in some cases even excellent. ''Ice in the Eyes'' is honestly a totally mediocre ballad, but ''Troubled Times'', ''Revival'' and the title track are all great. There is something about those songs that I find to be very interesting, and that ''something'' would most probably be that calmness which just overwhelms you and makes you listen to them over and over again. Those would be the highlights of this record and the prime examples of Oratoria's musical style. Of course, it depends on your mood will you enjoy this album or not: if you're feeling down in the mouth - welcome aboard; if you're feeling like Painkiller - stay the hell away...
I could somehow get past the lack of aggression, but one thing about this album is inexplicable. You see, ''Time to Understand'' contains only seven songs, which is very unusual for today's standards. But, two songs are short instrumental interludes that are very forgettable (''Memory'' and ''Epilogue''), and the bonus track is a title track with a different intro, no more changes. So all in all, you have only four proper songs on this record. That's insufficient, to say the least. True, Mournful Congregation has got albums with four or five songs only, but all of those songs last for more than ten minutes. Six tracks are the absolute minimum for a traditional heavy metal album (Aria - ''Hero of Asphalt'', 1987). The band has even been on a hiatus since 2007, so they had more than enough time to write some quality stuff. Thus ''Time to Understand'' sounds very rushed and forced, as if the band were desperate to release anything, just to show that they aren't dead. This was obviously a wrong call, and they mustn't do things like this in the future.
Although ''Time to Understand'' has got some excellent music in it, I can't help but feeling disappointed. See it for yourself, that's the best advice I could give to you. As for me, I wish better luck next time to Oratoria.
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