KYPCK – Cherno
Century Media – 9978062 - 21July 2008
by John Norby
First off, I absolutely
despise albums that autorun a Flash video every time you fire it into the computer CD drive. Normally you get around it, but with this frustration-inducing little nugget I couldn’t get the tracks to play no matter what I tried. Every time, the same video window opened up and…. ah, let’s just get to the review. Needless to say, after all the failed attempts and having to go downstairs to crank it up in the living room and scribble down
handwritten notes (imagine!) I thought, “This better be fucking good!” Well, it was ok…
This is a Finnish doom band with a penchant for Soviet war history, so much so, in fact, that all the lyrics are in Russian, as is the band name –
KYPCK is Kursk in the Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian element is perhaps the most enticing thing about
KYPCK and it does serve to give the band an air of pseudo-authenticity about them, particularly when Erkki Seppänen’s vocals kick in.
Obviously, with
KYPCK being a doom band, the pace of
Cherno is decidedly slow and far from anything complex. Of note is that ex-
Sentenced guitarist Sami S. Lopakka lends his expertise to
KYPCK, albeit in a much different fashion than he did with his former band. His trademark elements are still in there and
Sentenced comes to the fore on a number of occasions throughout
Cherno. It’s most noticeable on the few clean guitar passages on here, with closer
‘Demon’ kicking off in true
Sentenced fashion.
Standout tracks on here are
‘Odin Den Iz Zhizni Yegora Kuznetsova’ (‘One Day Of Yegor Kuznetsov's Life’) – with its classic ripping doom intro riff and
‘Stalingrad’, which is track of the album for me. Good stuff, well executed, and with a powerful production but, sadly, this falls into the category of one of those albums where you just skip through to find your favourite bits after a while. Oh, and the videoclip thing….
Official KYPCK Website
Official KYPCK Myspace
Official Century Media Website
