Vrag – Rendületlenül

Yet another example, here at the start of the new year, of a band that is just up my proverbial alley that somehow managed to go completely undetected by me and my clearly defective musical radar. It has become more and more evident to me that I need to expand my hunting grounds in order to catch and discover more bands that I will clearly like, and most of the more recent examples seem to force my gaze eastward. Que the subject of todays scribble, Hungarian one-man act Vrag.
Having been around for the last fifteen years, they are not as egregious an oversight on my part as some of the other bands from the past that I have mentioned. Nevertheless, Rendületlenül (Hungarian for “Unpeturbed”) nevertheless marks the fourth Full-length release of the band and the eleventh overall, counting Splits and Demos (but not Compilations).
The name of the band itself has two meanings depending on what language you take it from – Either ‘Devil’ (if going by the Serbo-Croatian language) or ‘Enemy’if going by Bulgarian/Russian. Regardless of which translation best suits your fancy, I still find it an apt name when it comes to describing the musical and lyrical themes of the band.
Lyrics-wise the multi-talented artist focuses on the three disparate, yet not disimilar themes of darkness, mysticism and nature – All of which tie in excellently to the ‘Devil’ translation, which in and of itself often can be used as a synonym for ‘Enemy’. But I digress.
On the musical angle, Vrag runs a fine line between modern Black Metal and Atmospheric Black Metal – Not quite the latter, but far more based on nuanced soundscapes than the former. An unsurprisingly, to anyone who has read any of my little rants before, I find it very appealing. It has the raw edge and aggression of the former, drenched in the coursing storytelling sprinkled throughout the music of the latter, merged together into one of those coherent wholes you only really find in one-man acts and concept albums.
The title track can be found below, but I whole-heartedly recommend any fans of either genre mentioned earlier to give all six tracks on the record a spin. It will only cost you thirty-nine minutes (exactly so) and perhaps a strong desire to learn Hungarian once you are done in order to delve a few spades deeper into the atmosphere of the record.
Recommended for fans of Witcher and Solus, both kinsmen of Vrag.

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