Early this year, Russian Medieval Dark Ambient project "Hexlwir" released its first album "Manifestation of Forgotten Souls." The project was formed by Rux Minn.
The Metal Sister had the chance to review the album, so let's go through the album together.
The Review
In fact, the album follows amusing dark instrumental mood. It is affected by the gloomy sight of the graves, the high pitched-spiritual chanting, and bleak voices and sound that accompanied Death. Through 15 tracks, Hexlwir takes us to a journey through the darkest mood the man faces. Hexelwir uses ravens sounds and church bells to give you the impression of Death declaration.
While, the ghostly human voice and screams portray the conflicted voices in the man's thoughts before facing death. I like the idea of mixing the folk tunes of the frozen lands of the north with the inherited voices that related to death in the collective mind. In other words, people think that Death has voice, ravens, ghosts, darkness are such a punch of the thoughts people inherit.
Also, you may feel that the album art reflects the idea of death and the forgotten: innocent girl meets an old dead skeleton, it expresses the unbidden connection between the alive and the dead, or may mean that the dead crossed the roads before who are now existed. It is just a symbol for the circle of life, we are alive now and forget the dead, but sooner or later we will join them
Hexlwir manages to combine the meaning of death for the old with dramatic well-scripted darkened music. One of the most amusing tracks in the albums is "Black Goat Dance." You may feel that it is somehow cheerful, but in fact it is scary and deceiving.
On the other hand, the music of the album does not only reflect the thoughts of the alive, but also reflects the thoughts of the dead. From another perspective, those darkened sounds, broken riffs, flying ravens could reflect what is left from the memories of the dead. who are buried under the mud and snow, and their bodies start to be engaged with the dust. All is left from them just flown memories that carried by the blowing, ashen winds.
"Dark Castle in the Moonlight," and "Ravens Fly over the Pagen Lands" are the best two tracks in my point of view. I like the way how the music imitate the movement of the Ravens that fly to bring the caverns of Death, according to folk thoughts.
Summing Up
To sum up, the album is a beautiful and darkened piece of ambient music. Music listeners who are big fan for the falling dark tunes, folk riffs, neoclassic effects will like this release so much. The process of recording and music mixing went well, so you can trace the good harmony between the sounds. Through listening to the, I felt that some parts of the tracks could be influenced with Drudkh's "Songs of Grief and Solitude", and Empyrium's "Weiland".
Special thanks to: Gihane Koraytem and Rux Minn for trusting our blog.
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