I saw the hand of doom reach into my sky and enfold my sun, drawing it down beyond the distant horizon. The colours of my world bled away, through differing shades of grey to the darkness of unending night and there, in the black, wracked by pain beyond all previous imagining, I found I could see with a clarity I had never known before. As love and dreams fled into the shadows, my vision of the path ahead was suddenly unobstructed and I could see my final place of rest awaiting me. The tomb held no terrors for me now and I began my steady, deliberate journey through the vale of tears with quiet acceptance – slowly fading as each step brought me closer to that cold, ungentle bed.
Born in Tbilisi in Georgia, on the banks of the Kura River, ENNUI have built a formidable reputation on the foundations of four full length studio albums, each one a towering edifice of funeral doom/death metal. From the 2012 debut, Mze Ukunisa, inspired by the poetic works of Terentio Graneli, to 2018s End Of The Circle, described by Mystification Zine as “a stunning dance of extremes”, Ennui have followed their own path of vast, measured heaviness and unflinching explorations of life changing emotions and the fundamental questions of existence. Now, it is time for the fifth chapter in their grand tale to be written as Ennui walk ever deeper into the darkness…with Qroba.
Qroba, meaning vanishment, the process of disappearance, begins with the revelatory ‘Antinatalism’, its staggering chords and drum beats like distant thunder conjuring a sense of immeasurable scale entwined with a piercing, poignant intimacy of thought and experience. A voice rises through the music, climbing up from the deepest chambers of the heart and the melancholy, grief and summoned solitude are all encompassing. Portentous melodies lead us on through a windswept wilderness and shuddering riffs draw down the dark and bleach the sun’s warmth from the world. This is deeper, darker, colder than ever before…and we have only just begun. The weight of the first full chords of ‘Becoming Void’ drive the breath from your body and the illusions of life’s comforts are crushed, ground into the frozen soil, before achingly beautiful guitar leads of sublime sorrow climb from the bleak vista. ENNUI’s ability to weave remarkable subtlety and emotion into music of such staggering weight is exemplified in ‘Decima’, where delicate notes and avalanches of sound evoke the moment of heartbreak and draw it out through eternity, with a traditional three stringed lute, the panduri, adding the melancholy atmosphere of the Georgian mountains. And still Qroba carries us onwards, through the soul-shaking, overwhelming majesty of ‘Down To The Stars’ to our final unmaking with ‘Mokvda Mze’; where opening notes of rich resonance are gradually consumed by the tremendous power of Ennui in full flight – those earthshaking vocals, those inexorable chords and lamenting melodies – and we are cast upon the eternal, fathomless seas of grief, until, at last, we slip into nothingness.
Mixed and mastered by Esoteric’s Greg Chandler, whose knowledgeable touch has given such heft and presence to works by Officium Triste, My Silent Wake, Pantheist and many more, Qroba possesses an agonised nobility of sound, a layered, textured depth that infuses the songs with a remarkable unswerving honesty. Surely the pinnacle in Ennui’s outstanding canon of work to date, Qroba will be released by Meuse Music Records on February 27th, bedecked in the stunning artwork of Ben J ‘Winterkeep’ (Ofnus), with additional design from Vladimir ‘Smerdulak’ Chebakov (1914, Lake Of Tears etc) – and the scope and power of funeral doom will be redefined once more.
Line-up: David Unsaved – Guitars, bass, vocals | Serge Shengelia – Guitars
Alexander Gongliashvili – Drums | Andrey Azatyan – Guitars | Kakhi Kiknadzr – Guitars