Olhava - Frozen Bloom (CD)

Release Date: 07/02/21

Post-black metal/blackgaze from Russia

Russian blackgaze duo Olhava is back with their new studio album. Frozen Blooom is the natural follow-up to self-titled Olhava (2019) and Ladoga (2020), and integrates some dronescapes the band experimented on Never Leave Me Alone (2020), the drone version of their debut.

Multi-instrumentalist Andrey Novozhilov and drummer Timur Yusupov describe their new journey with words of thoughtful contemplation: 'When winter is just starting to fade and give some space to the first steps of spring... When life starts to reappear and the very early flowers peek through the thawing soil, a sudden drop of the temperature can leave them petrified and frozen back again, punished by the 'Queen of Fields'. This statuesque dead beauty, being infinitely alive and dead at the same time is the main metaphor of this album. Frozen Bloom is about unfulfilled dreams. About how we sacrifice everything today for some abstract 'tomorrow', which may never come. But tomorrow and yesterday don't exist - only this very moment of static contemplation is real'.

Frozen Bloom is Olhava's fourth opus in three years, and here the duo took some different routes compositionally. Two of the four tracks are traditionally storm-like blackgaze passages, while the other two are leaning towards a more meditative drone experience. The album also features A. Lunn, who kindly agreed to record an electric guitar solo as well as acoustic parts and choral parts on 'Frozen Bloom I'.

Frozen Bloom was recorded at Olhava home studios, as well as at the local rehearsal space. Mikhail Kurochkin took care of mixing and mastering.