Artist: UnSun
Label: Century Media
Release: 2008
Rating: 3.5/5
Unsun is a brand-new band founded by Mauser, guitarist of Polish death metal veterans Vader, after he left Vader. His new musical vision simply demanded that he set out on new creative paths. The whole thing is so clearly far removed from Vader that the guy got met halfway by a girl with an angelic voice, and then some. A girl with a properly angelic look, too. Singer Aya.
Take massive, down-tuned riffing that builds a proper reinforced-concrete wall of sound, the kind Mauser brought over from Vader, conjuring up a truly doomy, gloomy, dark atmosphere, and pair it with Aya’s perfectly clean, girlishly spotless vocals, which in the pop arena could come across as sugary, playful and pampering. What you end up with in UnSun’s music, genre-wise, comes closest to what we call gothic metal.
Remember the mid-nineties, when Nightwish or Sinergy burst onto the scene? Nobody had sounded like that before, or offered that kind of experience. Later bands, with few exceptions, the ones with female vocalists, never managed to make the same impression with their arrival. Well, UnSun have the damn luck of sounding incredibly distinctive with just their debut “The End Of Life”. And building the atmosphere that carries the album is what they pull off best. Mauser masterfully carved computer samples of extra sub-rhythms, or simply repetitive sonic loops, into the wall of riffs, giving UnSun a stamp of recognizability and freshness you rarely come across. The album has a unique, cataclysmically icy breath of atmosphere on which Aya’s voice literally ripples, and the color of her voice contrasts perfectly with the production of the riffs. The first three tracks are practically competing over who wins first prize for crawling under the listener’s skin fastest. Those are Whispers, Lost Innocence, and the most impressive of the bunch, Blinded By Hatred. The compact, melodically polished minor-key choruses, with Aya front and center, absolutely grab the listener’s full attention. The cerebral effect is like dealing with sweet poison, or some kind of dangerously sweet intoxication that leads to paralysis, numbness. The computer samples ramp up the drama. Besides the first three tracks, the chorus in Destiny also stands out for its melodic polish.
I have just one negative remark. Aya sings her English lyrics in a horrifically off dialect. So horrific that the whole thing ends up as compatible as can be. You’ll say I’ve lost it. And yet. We all know how funny and pitiful English sounds when pronounced along the axis of dark forces Miloševič-Arafat-Gadafi, but in Aya’s case the thing is light years away from that. Think of Siddharta, and how they managed to make Slovenian melodic. That’s roughly how Aya approaches it. A dialect that works purely in the positive in the grand total, and with which UnSun even earn bonus points when it comes to bringing melody into English. This remark sounds hard to believe. But still. It works. You do notice it clearly when listening to the album though, and purists, who’ll recognize even more than the five English words I managed to, will surely be bothered by it.
So. UnSun is a thing that orthodox Vader devotees and all the radical factions of the metal crowd on this planet will be nowhere near supporting. Broadly speaking, UnSun aren’t bringing a musical revolution. But they have put out an album with its own atmosphere, strong and expressive dramatic vibes, topped off with Aya’s excellent singing, the main reason this album stands apart from trillions of other similar attempts by bands. Evanescence can only cry when they hear this album and realize everything their music is missing, and Lacuna Coil and the like won’t fare any better in the same situation. UnSun built the album with dead simple tricks, stripped-down solos and plain one-dimensional rhythms, and their metal often even brushes against pop waters (for the latter, check out the album cover too). Aya’s vocals are a total win and the element on which the success of UnSun’s musical language will rest in the future as well. Modern and very infectious. Finally, something interesting again. Proof that Polish bands can be interesting even when they step away from the extreme branches that heavy metal knows in the genre sense.
Lineup
Aya – vocals
Mauser – guitar, samples
Heinrich – bass guitar
Vaaver – drums
Production
Szymon Czech & Marcin Kielbaszewski
Tracklist
1. Whispers
2. Lost Innocence
3. Blinded By Hatred
4. Face The Truth
5. Other Side
6. Destiny
7. Memories
8. Bring Me To Heaven
9. On The Edge
10. Closer To Death
11. Indifference
12. Whispers
Album length: 42.22
