With the non-stop wave of NS black metal bands pouring out of Poland, the scene there has managed to become almost uniquely saturated over the course of 2-3 years. With numerous worthless bands stinking up the place out East, it's nice to see a group like Gontyna Kry bringing some class to the whole mess. "Welowie" is thirty minutes of raw and disgusting black metal - but with an obvious underlying dosage of talent. It's dark, mysterious, and quick to invoke melancholy - great stuff.

Patented Burzum style screaming is interwoven with some rather excellent riffs - just listen to 'Piesn sprezed wiekow' for example: dissonant and heavily fuzzy because of the production, but it has that exceptional combination of hatred and melancholy that only the best can come up with. Truly, an fine song. Distortion free guitar parts only add to the glum feel of the entire album, and as such, I can imagine this band being one of the very few to create black metal giving off the feelings often ignored by Burzum influenced bands.

The entire CD (pro-packaged, but with a black CD-R? Why?) outside of a mention of the production date is printed in Polish, so obviously the slavs will appreciate this more than the rest of us. Gontyna Kry have signed to a Spanish label, and have apparently been provided with a decent studio budget, so it should be interesting to hear what they come up with next…

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