Vyr Muk is a Ukrainian one-man metal project rooted in death/black metal, now releasing its new full-length album, “Chants of the Tenebrous Depths”. It is the brainchild of Vladyslav Blizniuk, who performs all instruments himself, with guest vocalists from Ukraine’s extreme metal underground lending their voices. “Chants of the Tenebrous Depths” is not just another blackened death metal album—it is a shadow-drenched work of anguish, despair and unrest. It embodies human torment and fear, a sonic reaction to inhumanity, brutality and total destruction. Horror is cloaked in extreme metal tones, weaving a dense audio-web of death and black metal rhythms, riffs and vocals. The result is naturally imaginative and diverse, expanding even further with unexpected turns: the use of flute, traces of melodic European death metal, majestic black metal atmospheres, and even post-black metal elements. Ukraine’s current reality inevitably shapes Blizniuk’s perspective—as he channels the terror of war into dark, feral and merciless art. It is the pure, sincere, unvarnished expression of an extreme metal artist responding to war, devastation and the ruin born of hatred. Vyr Muk delivers a death/black metal monstrosity—grim, poisonous, cobwebbed, and decayed—made for devotees of extreme metal. If you can’t handle bearing witness to this outcry, avoid “Chants of the Tenebrous Depths”. But if blackened death metal is what you breathe, live and sleep by, this album will be your new obsession!
♦ 9/10
Dimitris Zacharopoulos
