HEARTS OF ATLANTIS

— First review of this album —

A totally obscure band with virtually nothing to be found about it, HEARTS OF ATLANTIS is a post-rock / post-metal band from Ulyanovsk, Russia that formed in 2009 and has released a few EPs and a couple albums with the latest emerging in 2018. This debut EP LOST came out in 2009 and features three tracks at nearly 24 minutes of playing time.

The band has gone through some lineup changes over the years but at this stage it Alexey (guitar), Vitaliya (drums) and Sasha on bass guitar. These three tracks feature a plodding procession that alternates between cleaner post-rock and a more caustic post-metal style. The spidery guitar arpeggios often sound a bit out of the Deathspell Omega playbook and the savage vocal style sounds a bit more black metal than sludge.

The production on this release is gawd awful as there is an annoying static throughout the distorted guitar parts. It's some kind of feedback which showcases the amateur nature of this release. Likewise the music itself is nothing to get excited about as it just plods along and never really goes anywhere. The non-distorted guitar parts are just fine and the atmospheric backdrop sounds decent as well but overall the static is just ridiculous even if it was intended to be some sort of lo-fi gimmick done on purpose.

Pretty much the ONLY info on the entire interweb about HEARTS OF ATLANTIS is on its Bandcamp page where all the albums can be sampled but i'm sure if anyone had anything to say about them it wouldn't be very positive at least judging from this botched production of an EP. The band would improve a bit on future releases but this early offering is really not that great. Other than the static which is very loud BTW, the music is listenable but fairly uninventive and a tad boring.