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The First Chapter

by Second To Sun

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    Me Or Him artwork done by Aleh Zielankievič. Professional silk screen printing
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1.
The title can be translated as “The spirit of Kusoto”. Kusoto is a holy grove of the Mari people – the last pagan nation in Europe. Such groves have very deep sacral meaning and serve to Mari as a “church”. Cutting trees , as well as gathering mushrooms or berries or even simply walking inside the grove without a dire need is strictly forbidden for fear of curse, hex or even death. Few people know much about Kusoto, fewer who dare venture inside for obtaining this knowledge, ever return. -At the beginning of the track listeners can hear Mari folk song “Sun rises” -There is an unofficial fan-created clip created with the permission of Ukraminafilm. Video is full of all sorts of grim humor. Cartoon is called Kolobok (Roly-Poly) from “Strasti-mordasti” series
2.
Track “Me or him” tells about an ancient Udmurtian curse. In order to cast it a person had to conduct a ritual that required suicide of the person casting it. The book “Dawks of my udmurtian axe” by Vyacheslav Ar-Sergi (Мои засечки удмуртским топором, Вячеслав Ар-Серги) says “It takes incredible effort to put an Udmurt out of temper, however, should one succeed in doing so, bringing him back into his previous state is no longer possible. In this condition Udmurt takes fatal decisions, ones that cannot be changed or reversed, and sometimes these decisions are tragic. The world in the eyes of the Udmurt becomes flawed, inept and no longer desirable or even acceptable if such completely unnecessary things as conflicts, enemies etc begin to contaminate it, like some infectious diseases. When it happens the Udmurt has a toss-up which have, as does any coin, only two possible choices (sides): me or him… The most terrible decision the Udmurt could take in such situation was to go to the offender and hang himself in his yard. That lead to the enemy’s name getting dragged in the mud forever, his fate was to become the target of endless prosecutions and inevitably become devastated and impoverished. His descendants would forever bear the black mark of a soul-murdering father. Matchmakers had always been careful about the history of candidates, so bearing a pitch-brand would tremendously cut the chances for the young men to find a good marriage. In most cases they would simply get the mitten.
3.
“Land of the Fearless Birds” is dedicated to the victims of tragic events that had been occurring in Karelia since 1937. Music was written under strong and grim impressions caused by reading the book «Карелия 37» (Karelia 37). Those were the times when terrible deeds were being committed in the northern part of RSFSR. Krasny Bor alone had witnessed more than a thousand people being fusilladed and every stone was covered with human blood. —Chorus is a rearrangement of Karelian folksong “Kylä Vuotti Uutta Kuuta” —Main riff is nothing but a slower version of Karelian rune “Vaka Vanha Väinämöinen” —Song uses Karelian and Finnish folk instruments, including kantele and jouhikko (jouhikas in Finnish), which was processed with a amp.
4.
Narčat 02:17
Narčat (Narchat) is the name of Mokshan czarina (Moksha and Mordva describe the same nation but Russian people are more familiar with the name “Mordva”) although she cannot be found in any historical records. The legend has it that Narčat was a daughter of Mokshan kanazor (king) Puresh who was the ruler of the early feudal formation of Mokshans called Volost Puresheva in which several fiefdoms were united. Legends about Narčat were first recorded in 1920th by I.F. Sadin, member of Saratov Scientific Archives Commission. “Czarina was a young woman of great beauty. She could ride the horse as any Cossack, and had 300 men as servants, and 20000 warriors. She built herself a palace on the beach of Moksha river and a summerhouse afield where she used to spend her summer days. There also was an underground tunnel leading from the summerhouse right to the palace. In the times of her rule there was a great battle between Mordvians and the Tartar Yoke. The battle happened during winter on thin river ice. Despite her vigorous resistance Narčat armies had been defeated and czarina led her horse into the ice-hole where she drowned.” -Chorus includes traditional Mokshan melody -At the end of the track listeners can hear Mokshan female choir
5.
05.05. 02:20
6.
Track the Blood Libel dedicated to Multan Case - process happened in may 1892 at the time of Russian Empire against the group of peasants-udmurt people (also known as Votiaks) from village Stary Multan of Malmyjian region in Vyatian governorate. 10 peasants were accused in ritual murder case for blood sacrifice to the pagan gods.
7.
02.02. 01:49
8.
Red Snow 04:10
“Red Snow” tells the story about nine young men who died at the infamous Dyatlov Pass (also known like a "Dyatlov Pass incident"). Reasons of their deaths vary with each opinion — some say it was due to the attack by the native peoples of the North Ural (Khanty and Mansi), some believe its reasons to be of much deeper and conspiratorial nature. —The track contains several rearranged traditional songs from Khanty and Mansi people. The most distinctive one is called “Kukushka” (Cuckoo) and can be easily heard at the end part of the song. —We also added some samples which should help to create a better image of Dyatlov Pass incident: we included shamanic tambourine, woman voice singing in Khanty language, drunken young men vocalizing, and the scrunching sound of the footsteps approaching the tents. —The cover represents musicians’ own fantastic version of the incident: the character on the foreground is a Red Army soldier with his blood turned into glass because of cold, which is nothing but a direct allusion to John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982). The background shows the well-known Manpupuner weathering pillars, located some 70 kilometers (43,5 miles) away from the where of an accident.
9.
Virgo Mitt 03:37
“Virgo Mitt” is dedicated to a legend that became well-known at the very dawn of this millennium. It all began in the middle of 1960th in a small town of M. that is not far from Tallin when a car mechanic Virgo Mitt decided to dig himself a well. The work was going perfect until his shovel suddenly bumped into something of metallic nature. All his efforts to dig the thing up or to find its edge and dig there had proven useless. That metallic plate simply seemed to have no end. Then Mitt got a rock-drill. Persistent man had been drilling the plate for hours and hours trying to make a hole in it so that his already invested time and efforts would not be in vain. The upper layer of the plate appeared to be not too thick yet extremely tough. The inner layer had a different, organized structure (like icicles or nails). Nothing is impossible to a willing mind: few days later Mitt had a hole in the plate, that appeared to be 1-1,5 inches thick as Mitt assured, big enough for a well, and a whole bucket of metallic shards. The water began to well up and Mitt decided that his work on the well was finished so he threw the shards back into the hole but kept a couple of the bigger ones (around 10 centimeters in diameter) as a souvenir. In time though one piece was lost but the fate of the other was much more interesting… Mitt told a chemist friend of his about this unusual discovery. So the shard got into Tallinn Polytechnic Institute. In 1969 the shard was given into the hands of a research scientist and later to Herbert Vijding — a vice-director of research in the Geological Institute ESSR Academy of Science. Perhaps that could have been the end of the shard’s story, however a couple of years later the shard was accidently touched by one of the engineers. The man got hit with something that looked like a very powerful electrical discharge and the engineer lost consciousness. Vijding was amazed: so many times he touched the shard yet nothing had ever happened to him. The legend hides another curious fact, the cats were got completely obsessed with the well. All these elements became the inspiration for the song cover. —Initially “Virgo Mitt” was planned as a 100% black-metal song —Leitmotif was created back in 2013 under a strong influence of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt —One can hear cats purring in the background of the beautiful melody at the end of the track
10.

about

Two years have passed since we released our album "The First Chapter". As you know, we play instrumental metal and this fact brings some problems to the table: for example there are people who put inappropriate tags on us. We decided to enrich our music with another dramatic element, which appears to be the vocal performance of Gleb Sysoev from the Siberian black metal band Ultar. This is our first planned album release with vocals.

If anyone thinks that after this venture we'll never release instrumental albums, you're absolutely wrong. Nothing will change and instrumental albums will continue to drop, just with an addition of versions of the same albums with vocals. The next "vocalized" album will be "Blackbound", as you can guess.

I mixed, produced and did everything possible for one and a half years to present an accurate and correct perception of our music on this album in Europe and USA. We have put our souls into this. We recorded additional parts, did a tremendous job to make the overall sound better, remixed and remastered the album and rearranged some of the song's elements. Obviously just the music was not enough to entirely understand our idea. But after all music is what matters most, regardless of your positive or negative perception of it.

Best regards,
Vladimir

credits

released August 23, 2017

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