Year: 2021
Total Time: 27:16
Label: Witching Hour Productions

The BATUSHKA drama continues and into 2021 as Krysiuk decided, six months after the release of “Raskol” and three months after the live album “Black Liturgy”, to release new music again. The fact that he is also the owner of Witching Hour Productions gives him the freedom and comfort to promote very easily his version of BATUSHKA. The whole trick is familiar… new release with beautiful cover and artwork in many different impressive cd, vinyl  versions etc. The important question of course in this case is if this fancy wrap hides in it musical content of corresponding quality.

The answer is that of course it does not hide in it anything remarkable and comes to confirm my personal opinion since their modest debut “Hospodi”. The truth is that last year’s EP was quite good and I was even surprised by the fact that Krysiuk managed to release good songs. He may have done a great job on the vocals in “Litourgiya” but he doesn’t possess any special skills in writing quality compositions and that is the reason, in combination with the outcry by BATUSHKA fans, that made Metal Blade kick out his band. Let us talk now about the musical part of ” Царю Небесный / Carju Niebiesnyj “, which easily competes in mediocrity with “Hospodi”, as they try once again to reproduce unsuccessfully the sound of BATUSHKA for which they became popular in 2015.

In their Black/Doom Metal sound for the first time they tried to incorporate some new elements, such as female vocals and new instruments such as trumpets in the last song “Pismo VI”, giving it a more pompous character. Honest effort, but it does not save them from the general mediocrity, as the compositions sound as if they have not been carefully crafted. They simply mixed their mediocre Black Metal with the well-known orthodox and Slavic church chants with the familiar atmospheric passages and released the material.  An effort by Krysiuk to lure some fans to pre-order his band’s release, while he comfortably sits at his office in Witching Hour Productions’ headquarters.

 I hope that the whole situation with BATUSHKA will end soon and the real composer and founder of the band Krzysztof “Derph” Drabikowski gets his justice. In the beginning, I was not very interested in this particular controversy, but seeing Krysiuk trying through his label to take advantage of “Litourgiya”‘s success and present within a few months three releases in dozens of editions, which due to the low price are all being sold out, I cannot remain unaffected. Krysiuk  overall attitude gives me the impression that he feels a huge pressure to prove that he is the real BATUSHKA. A thought which only in his imagination exists, because when the time of crisis arrives, the music he offers us is completely indifferent and only our ears feel pressure.

Rating: 4/10
Label: Nikos Manousis
Related Link: BATUSHKA – Facebook Page