(Metal Blade Records)
Total Time: 51:07

It’s been 4 years since the year of BATUSHKA’s first appearance with their awesome debut album “Litourgiya”. It has created a great crash, not unfairly, around their name. So we are in 2019 and after the litigation and the other legal issues that are well known, two releases came in the lasttwo months under the name of BATUSHKA! “Hospodi” is the albumbyKrysiuk’s side (singer of the band at “Litourgiya”) and it’s the one that we will talk about.

About this release I cannot say that I had great expectations. The first songs I heard (that were released as video clips previously) did not give me the impression that it would be something extraordinary.The album is different from “Litourgiya” ,a fact that I expected. Here BATUSHKA sound more atmospheric and melodic, there are few fast tempo partsas the whole album almost moves in mid tempo pace. We can hearalso influences from the recent discography of BEHEMOTH.

The vocals are just like on the first album ,the orthodox elements awkwardly placed and overdone to the point where they are more than enough, and you get the impression that they were forced since “this is a BATUSHKA album”! Personally this “Christianization” of Black Metal finds me not really excited, it’s something “out” of thisgenre. Imagine, there are times on thisalbum that you feel like being at an orthodox ceremony.

Apart from this negative fact, the album as a total sound is good; not something special though. Surely thisatmosphere created by the orthodox elements, the chanting etc makes the disc sound different compared to the other Black Metal releases. Of course there is no comparison with the masterpiece “Litourgiya”, not even with the amazing “Panikhida” released by the “other” BATUSHKA (held by the founder and main composer of the band Krzysztof Drabikowski) about 2 months ago.

Rating: 6,5/10

Nikos Manousis