Zaklon
Шэпт Чорнага Лісьця

Whisper of Black Foliage is the title of this album by Belarusian one man band called Zaklon, it is the second album and it is being released in a slightly bigger number than the first time it was released in only 50 copies on CD-R. Are you interested so far? When I say that it is an underground black metal thing we are dealing with here, are you still interested? If you are, I am not sure you are going to take notice of what I say anyway, if you are not you may not even care anyway. It is a dark looking album that is supposed to have clever lyrics and all of that but as they are all in belarusian I am not really sure as I cannot understand the lyrics and the song titles translated does not really offer much to support this claim. But lets not kick the guy’s kneecaps just yet, let us look at how this album sounds.

It sounds like black metal recorded in some cave somewhere in the darker forests of the Taiga, I would say that the sound is not really that impressive and neither is the vocals which sounds like they came from an injured beaver. One really has to wonder about the recording processes of albums like this, are they done in 56 minutes in a cave, no retakes no nothing and then no real work in the mix and all of that either. I know that it took more time than that though since one guy did it all so he had to go at it several times. But the nine tracks are not that varied and neither are they particularly heavy so it feels more or less like black metal usually does even though it has some more epic elements or whatever you like to call them but most is still drowned in the regular black metal soup.

It is not very good this album, it is dreary and dull. Quite slow is it as well and the songs are rather boring overall which makes it into an album that I am quite pleased to throw away now as it really doesn’t do anything for me. Then of course inunderstandable almost inaudible lyrics are quite detrimental as well, altogether this makes this album into a very dull album and a pretty bad one as well.

Not much more than that to say really, other than if you like the more primitive kind of black metal you might find this one appealing but if you don’t really care for the black metal genre, this is an album that will not make you change that opinion. I would recommend for most of us to stay far away from this album by Zaklon, it is a poor album plain and simple.

HHHHHHH