Svarrogh is a solo project of Dimo Dimov from Bulgaria in 2001. Svarrogh is named after an ancient slavian god of fire and the sun. Svarrogh recorded some demo’s but never released all of them. After that Svarrogh released some splits, E.P’s and records, and now there is the release of the latest album Kukeri.

 

Like I said before, Svarrogh is a mix of metal with other musical genre’s. But what kind of metal and what are the other influences? Well, the the basic is raw oldschool black metal. Mix that with some nice dark ambient and some Bulgarian folk and you get Svarrogh.

 

To create these damn great songs Dimo used all kinds of instruments next to the classic metal instruments. Mandolin, bells, didgeridoo, all kinds of percussion, synths, flutes, a Kaba Gaida (some kind of bagpipes) and so on. I guess you can imagine these give the music a great poetic and historical feeling. The lyrics are about folklore, Bulgarian poems, Slavian and Bulgarian mythology, tangra spiritualism, ritual shamanism and pagan/historical topics.

 

The songs are all extremely good, there is so much variation on Kukeri, for instance the song ‘Mourning Mill’ , an awesome song with some nice black metal structures, combined with a mandolin, folk choirs and acoustic guitars. A very well written melodic and sinister song. And even a better example would be ‘My Dinasty’, this song has so many turns, which makes it everything but boring.

 

The production of Kukeri fits the songs very well, it’s very clear and well balanced but it also sounds very raw. Fans of melodic black metal or folk fans should get Kukeri, which is an awesome addition to your collection.