Qroba
Ennui

From Bandcamp, "Qroba" means "vanishment". It is a story of coming to terms with the inevitable, told through melancholy and contemplation. The fifth full-length album by ENNUI blends atmospheric funeral doom and death metal with Georgian poetry and the spirit of the land it was born from. Slow, heavy rhythms, cold harmonies, and haunting melodies evoke a descent into stillness, where pain and peace become one. This is music about the beauty of disappearance, majestic, inevitable and timeless." The album has five songs, and "Antinatalism" is first. The term means the belief that it is morally wrong or unjustifiable for people to have children. The opening tones are slow and powerful, with devastatingly heavy drum strikes and commanding riffs, and the guttural vocals rumble like an earthquake deep below the surface of the ground.
"Becoming Void" is equally as dreadful. For me, it's akin to feeling the constant chill of howling winds and sub-freezing temperatures of the far North, and it's nearly impossible to get warm. That kind of pervasive cold can drive a man insane. "Decima" hears the misfortune continue to reign down on your head like an endless pile of bricks. You think you might have a brief reprieve, but it is fleeting. Each passing note, each guttural utterance, is another nail in your coffin. Even the clean passage sounds cold and sterile. "Down, to the Stars" uses some synths along with the guitar work to create a towering skyscraper of riffs that builds on the one before, until you are looking up and can't see the top of the building anymore. That feeling of dread is compounded exponentially.
"Mokvda Mze" is the final act of death. Clean tones open the song, but when the guttural arrive, they remind you of fall fading into winter. All of the leaves have fallen off the trees, and all of the flowers have died. It's like looking at a landscape of nothing living. Overall, the best part of the album was trying to decide if it was nearly void of all emotion, or bursting alive with it, and that depends on the listener's perspective. It was composed in a way that it could go either direction.
8 / 10
Excellent
Songwriting
Musicianship
Memorability
Production

"Qroba" Track-listing:
1. Antinatalism
2. Becoming Void
3. Decima
4. Down, to the Stars
5. Mokvda Mze
Ennui Lineup:
Alexandr Gongliashvili – Drums
Andrey Azatyan – Guitars
Kakhi Kiknadze – Guitars
Serj Shengelia – Guitars, Keyboards
David Unsaved – Guitars, Keyboards, Vocals
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