Raljarn – Practicing Death Album Review
Today we are featuring another promising progressive metal band, RALJARN, from RUSSIA. We have reviewed their fantastic new album, PRACTICING DEATH, along with its character, style, story, potential, and more.
Raljarn is a promising progressive metal/djent band I discovered about a year ago with one of his single releases. This time, they are back with their debut album, Practicing Death, which was released on January 21, 2021. For those who haven’t heard about the band before, Raljarn has started their careers with a single called; DarkHuman in 2019. Since then, the band released two more singles, North Omens (2020) and DeadHuman (2020), and their first album, Practicing Death (2021). Now, please give the song a listen while reading the rest of the article.
Raljarn is actually a one-mastermind-man project, yet I prefer addressing them as a band because of their form of making music. As some of you might know, I live very close to Soviet culture for a long time. The more I discover my own taste in life, the more I admire their artists’ vision, approach, and originality. For some reason, they struck me as super dark, moody, and depressive in everything they do, and they inspire me a lot. Raljarn is one of those very few promising bands that I know from the mother Russia, who I immediately recognize since I listened to their music for the first time. I often listen to their records on my personal playlists.
There are so many characteristics that I love in Raljarn. First of all, they have Russian/Scandinavian vibes in their music, image, and visuals, which I believe is a powerful feature. Scandinavians, hands down, simply are one of the greatest metalheads in the world, if not the greatest. In our case, Practicing Death is a top-class sounding album with a modern but thematic approach to its songwriting, super complex compositions with djent instrumentation, dark vibes, and the constant necessary aggression. It won’t be a mistake to define their music as a perfect blend of old school Scandinavian black metal darkness with the modern djent understanding. He has the theme, atmosphere, and powerful vibes, unlike other djent bands out there. You never feel like the focus is actually on the instrumentation, even though they have satisfying guitar playing and fat guitars all throughout the album. The important thing here is actually the dark mood, which I love about them. The overall feeling in every song is powerful enough to leave its taste in your memory. Well, that is actually more than the overall atmosphere; it is also the vocals and the path that guitars follow.
It isn’t easy to pick one favorite song off from the album. They are all different and have so much in common at the same time. For some reason, after highlighting DarkHuman, North Omens, and DeadHuman, releasing them as singles, the band have decided to open Practicing Death with North Omens and filmed a video for Urgehuman (new song). I respect that, and I am sure there’s a meaning behind this action.
On the other hand, the band has worked with several different vocalists along the way, such as Gleb Shashkov, Artem Sergeev, Ivan Evseev, and Ivan Hansen. They are all fantastic vocalists with powerful singing skills and characteristic vocals. I loved them all, hands down. After listening to Practicing Death a few times on repeat before writing my review, I realized how much in common Artem Sergeev has with Gojira‘s vocalist Joe Duplantier, who is one of my all-time favorite metal vocalists. This was another great pleasure to hear from Raljarn. Just like I mentioned above, there are so many things I like in Raljarn’s understanding of music. I simply feel like I am one of their faithful fans, ready to listen to whatever they put out. The truth is, I have huge respect for this band.
When I take all these into account, I’d like to say that once again I’ve had a great time listening to Practicing Death. People who are into dark progressive metal and djent will definitely dig this record, and place them somewhere special in their collections!
THE WHALE SONG and POSTHUMAN have earned their places in our TOP METAL SONGS PLAYLIST
Please go ahead and check out the links below if you’d like to find out more about the artist/band, follow them on social media, subscribe to their channels to show your support, and not miss any upcoming releases.
Raljarn – Practicing Death Album Review | Metalhead Community | Heavy Metal Blog | Metal Music Magazine
In conclusion, Metalhead Community Team congratulates RALJARN for their great job in PRACTICING DEATH and wishes them the very best in their future careers. Thank you for reading.
