Rating: 7/10
17 January 2011
Label: Season of Mist

This album by Silent Stream of Godless Elegy ‘Navaz’ is already a year old, when we get it for a review.
‘Navaz’ starts with the title-track. And although the tracks are not alike at all, the sound as we can hear it in the first song gives a good idea of the sound of SSOGE.
The music has massive orchestrations and a clean female vocals sometimes together with clean male vocals. The tracks aren’t heavy from the beginning to the end, but there are heavy pieces in it, in other moments the music is a lot less heavy which gives a lot more space to violin, cello and this kind of ethnic instruments.
In ‘Zlatohlav’ the guitars form a massive background while the strings form the main structure of the song. This sounds very nice. The vocals are nicely alternated and it has an almost Gothic feel.
Despite of the fact a song like ‘Slava’ could be easy to shout along with, you never get the urge to do so. It all sounds nice, but the thin clean female vocals and the orchestra give me the feeling I should lay back and listen closely. The solid guitars don’t change this feeling.
The only exception to this is the track ”Dva stíny mám’, the song is an invitation to bang your head real good. Al least in the beginning of the song, because it also contains a almost classic violin-concert in it.

‘Navaz’ is an album which sounds nice throughout the whole record, but I think the orchestral parts are a bit to much. I often wondered if I was listening to a metal-band with the support of an orchestra or to a orchestra using also metal-instruments. Ethno-metal is a well chosen description for their music, the Moravian sounds is thoroughly present throughout the album. Navaz is a very solid album, but in my opinion it could have been somewhat more exciting or more vivacious.

Tracklist

1. Návaz / Join
2. Mokoš / Earth Mother
3. Zlatohlav / Golden Head
4. Skryj hlavu do dlaní / Hide Your Head into Hands
5. Přísahám / Promise
6. Slava
7. Sudice / The Fate
8. Dva stíny mám / I Have Two Shadows
9. Pramen, co ví / Thinking Spring
10. Samodiva / Fay