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Parzival

Casta

Written by: PP on 04/12/2014 20:13:19

Parzival is the product of musical mastermind Dimitrij Bablevskij from Russia, who relocated to Denmark and started collaborating with a variety of musicians to translate the sounds echoing in his mind onto classical arrangements with medieval themes that draw equally much from neo-folk as they do from dark, gothic music and folk/symphonic metal. The alias Parzival even refers to a medieval German romance written by poet Wolfram von Eschenbach in the 13th century, so if you can imagine the dark realms of the Schwarzwald forest in medieval times with knights on horseback en route to a fortified castles much like you see on Game Of Thrones, you're a long way into understanding just how the band sounds like.

"Casta" is the tenth album by this unit that dates back to 1994, when they still went under the name of Stiff Miners, so Dmitrij has been keeping busy over the past two decades. It's a spacious, folk-rooted album with plenty of traditional instrumentation, unusual percussion, and a high focus on atmosphere and mood rather than traditional songwriting. Together with his orchestral sections, bagpipes, and industrial-style thumping and echoing percussion section, he creates an eerie, creepy atmosphere with vocals more suitable for monks in prayer rather than as vocals on a musical album. As a result, the record is far more suitable for a dramatic movie / tv series soundtrack than for actual music fans, as the purpose has never been to appease any natural listening desires rather than to construe a believable and an all-encompassing atmosphere. I can't even begin to imagine how strange of a live experience the darkwave style, deep "ommmmmmmmmm"'s of opener "Kalachakra" will be with the medieval themed instrumentation on the background. Remains to be seen if it is genius or pointless.

As for "Casta" as a whole, it's not exactly easy to rate because how do you rate an album that's so far astray from your regular understanding on music on the same scale as music? The answer is that you can't really, but from a music fan's perspective it's difficult to higher than a 5, even if it'd be a perfect accompanying soundtrack to any murky movie depicting the dark ages.

Download: Regnabit, Kalachakra
For the fans of: Laibach, Weh,
Listen: Facebook

Release date 30.06.2014
Mighty Music