Published: December 19, 2016

This month I had the great pleasure of reviewing two doom / death metal bands. The first one was the Greek IMMENSITY and now the Russian NEGATIVE VOICE, both released by Hypnotic Dirge Records. In their second album entitled "Cold Redrafted", they bring a refined and very elaborate sound. Led by Andrey "Obscurus" Samsonov (guitar), the band was founded in 2000 and remained active until 2004, having three demos released. After that period, there was a pause until the band returned in 2010, to release its first full length album "Infinite Dissonance" in 2013, already featuring current members Eugeniy Loginov (guitar / vocal), Alex Nikolskiy (bass) and Konstantin Pavlov (drums).

The first of the eight songs in "Cold Redrafted", already shows what these guys came for. After an instrumental introduction of practically one minute and a half, "Limitation" begins with a clean vocal, and in a short space of time they add an almost black metal voice. Many parts of this song refer to the death metal of the 1990s. "City of Decaying Gaze" follows it with a beautiful melody, highlighting the work of the two guitarists, mainly lead guitars.

"Nightmare Everlasting" begins in a slow and deep tone and evolves until it gets fast and aggressive. In a very interesting passage in the middle of the track they detach the instruments separately demonstrating all the techniques and skills of the musicians as high point of the production. "Karmic Pattern"  focuses mainly on guttural vocals and more depressive riffs. My two favorite songs from the album are "Instant" and "Light House", both bringing a melodic and melancholic atmosphere, with several changes of tempo and where the soft vocals are more prominent, along with the beautiful effects and distortions of the guitars. “Impasse” brings a very modern Doom Metal style and harmonic with very attractive rhythm. To finish the work we have "Draft Light", in a farewell tone of this excellent album.

"Cold Redrafted" shows an evolution in respect to its predecessor "Infinite Dissonance", counting on the inclusion of new elements and a more elaborate musicality. Although we can perceive diverse influences from bands like OPETH, CREMATORY and KATATONIA, the band has its own personality and style .The experience of listening to the album could be improved if they had had a little more carry in production. From my point of view, they failed letting the sound of the other instruments distance themselves from the guitars sometimes. Another point, is that the clean vocal is sometimes, too lazy and low in some sections.