VERSES OF SEVERANCE have no demo and no earlier EP. The project puts a Ukrainian multi-instrumentalist together with two guitarists based in the Netherlands, and Serpents of the North is the first thing they have released. Three songs, 24:18, out on 23 October. The band says these same songs will turn up again on a debut full-length due early in 2027. So the EP previews a record that is already finished. Bold way to walk in. It also puts more weight on three tracks than a debut usually has to hold.
The material comes from Ukrainian poetry written since the full-scale invasion. "Chalice" is built on the work of Maksym Kryvtsov, the poet and soldier killed at the front in January 2024, and the band says his family and his publisher cleared the use. There is a live studio video for the song. One by one the members walk up to the control room glass and stick notes to it, one name on each. There are a lot of them. The first to go up: Victoria Amelina. Volodymyr Vakulenko. Kryvtsov. Amelina is the writer who dug Vakulenko's diary out of his garden in Kapytolivka, where he had buried it the day before russian soldiers took him away. A missile killed her in Kramatorsk the following summer.
"Serpents of the North" opens with no build-up. Screaming vocals, crushing riffs, blastbeats. Seven and a half minutes, and the band spends them showing what it can do before anything quiet turns up. "Claws of the Dark" is the shortest song here at 5:44 and the darkest. It sits at mid tempo and never speeds up. At 1:38 the distortion drops out for an acoustic passage that offers no relief, then the drums return underneath it, kept low, and the weight comes back. Nothing on this EP sounds like a first attempt.
The band puts everything into "Chalice". It runs 11:09 and starts quiet, a minute of bass and then clean guitar, before distorted guitars and drums take the song over. The main riff sticks harder than anything else on the release. No vocals until past four minutes. The song moves in a pattern of calm, storm, calm, storm, and the delivery changes once the second quiet stretch has passed. Around minute eight the poem is read aloud over the music. That is a long wait for words on an eleven minute song. It never drags.
The cover is a painting on canvas and the weave shows. A dark figure with a rifle stands on a hill above a burning village, a river running past it, smoke over the whole sky. The recording lives up to that. Guitars carry weight without burying the drums, and the quiet stretches have air around them.
Serpents of the North rewards patience. If you want doom that can accelerate into black metal, and you will sit through four minutes of instrumental before a voice arrives, there is a lot here. For something shorter and more direct, start with "Claws of the Dark". The full-length is planned for next year. Cannot wait.
★★★★ 8/10
VERSES OF SEVERANCE - Chalice (live at De Kerk):
Follow VERSES OF SEVERANCE
- Bandcamp: https://versesofseverance.bandcamp.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/versesofseverance
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/versesofseverance
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VersesOfSeverance
Promo provided by the band.