This vacation time is a time of getting rid of the piles of music which are staked up and wait for reviews. One of the by far most overdue releases is a CD I received so many moons ago that I can't even remember when it was! The demo CD is from a band called The Committee, and the CD is called 'Holodomor'.
The cover letter explains that The Committee was formed in 2007, and that the band deals with topics which noone else likes to talk about, like the capture and submission of Russian and Slavic people. Heavy stuff indeed. So, the picture of comrade Stalin on the cover is no coincidence, eh?
Reading through the lyrics, you can tell that there's quite a bit of emotion and anger going through the individuals behind The Committee. Apparently, my research on the net tells me, the band consists of members of different European nationalities, their common language, though, being metal.
The first track is something I'd call a pure doom instrumental. The next three songs still maintain a doom feel, but The Committee turn out to be more of a black metal band than actually a doom band. As other recent reviews on this site will tell you, I'm not at all a fan of old school black metal, and yet I like this. The vocals are in no way hysterially screaming. Good. The guitars aren't quite as paper-thin and cold as some black metallists will have it, rather, they have a dark, sweeping feel to them and come in over you like waves of emotion, a bit like Russian music can do. Much the same throughout the three songs, really, but still I like what they do. The Russian choir at the end is just spot on as a grand finale - and exactly the way the great dictator would celebrate and glorify his murder of millions of innocent people.
'Holodomor' is not the best produced album out there. By no means. Still, The Committee manage to purport a lot of emotion, the feeling of death and cold, and the cry against the injustice done by the dictator Stalin was.
Give it a listen.
