Arriving all the way from Saint Petersburg, Russia via Hypnotic Dirge Records, today we have Epitimia and their latest full-length release titled “Faces of Insanity”. With a very melodic Ambient Black Metal sound, this excellent band pummels through nine highly melancholic tracks not apt for the faint of heart. With such a rich and atmospheric sound, this Russian 3-person outfit is by far one of best bands in the genre. 

After setting the mood with the excellent atmospheric track “Reminiscentia”, Epitimia delivers the hypnotic “Epikrisis I: Altered state of consciousness”. In this track, the band keeps building momentum with excellent shoegaze-ish guitars and the harsh vocals finally appear. With such a depressive mood and the subtle beauty of dreamy guitars complementing the distorted ones, this band is very near melancholic musical perfection. 

“Epikrisis II: Intrusive thoughts” keeps the atmospheric momentum going and with some excellent ‘aggressive’ sections allows the band’s sound to not get stale and keep pushing forward. The bass guitar line in this track is very well crafted to masterfully complement the awesome guitar work. After a more aggressive beginning in “Epikrisis III: Megalomania”, the trippy atmospheric passage around the 3:30 mark makes this song quite enjoyable and highly original in our book. 

The most ‘Black Metal’ track in this release has to be the brutal “Epikrisis IV: Jamais Vu” with all its traditional BM guitar sections. Greatly complemented by excellent melodic passages, this song is one of our favorite ones in this excellent release. Keeping the aggressive level to the max, “Epikrisis V and VI” deliver powerful songs that perfectly combine aggression and melody. Our favorite track in this release is the nine-minute epic “DS: Shizophrenia”, a song that nicely summarizes everything that you can find in “Faces of Insanity”. With beautifully crafted melodic sections, this track has very catchy sections that greatly showcase the band’s abilities to produce excellent songs. 

Closing with the moody “Lethe”, the band shows a bit more of their Shoegaze/Post-Black Metal side. We particularly love these emerging genres and Epitimia seems to have some influences of them and hopefully uses them more in the future. Overall, we think that Epitimia is an excellent band, and “Faces of Insanity” showcases perfectly their very unique sound. If you are looking for excellent depressing and atmospheric Black Metal, look no further and get this amazing release.