REVIEW: Violet Cold – Anomie (EP)

Violet Cold, the solo project of Emin Guliyev has been cooking up Anomie for almost two years now. Rife with experimentation, Anomie sees elements of an infinite amount of genres merge to create a truly exceptional and unique piece of art.

While you can find the band on bandcamp under black metal, Guliyev takes his project far beyond the realms of dark and extreme metal, with his music instilling a sense of euphoria in me from just the first song until the closing moments of the record. Guliyev does achieves this through his use of instrumentation throughout the tracks, incorporating a great deal of electronic elements into the record alongside your standard instrumentation for a genre such as metal, yet even then there isn’t just heavy riffs battering your ribcage. The heavy amount of instrumental sections on Anomie create a beautiful, atmospheric sound, yet you wouldn’t believe that they were also part of the same song as brutal, and dark heavy vocals..

My Journey To Your Space, is a great example of how metal music’s elements are used in an instrumental part, with synths layered over the top and a faint female vocal sample. The drums roll over the top of the track with a drone-like guitar part adding in one of various melodies that give such a vibrant atmosphere to the track. Violet Girl does this superbly too, a slightly dissonant melody on the guitar plays alongside electronic instrumentation that harmoniously blends in with the music, yet this is all playing over growling vocals, showing how Guliyev manages to bring together various elements that, musically, aren’t often seen together, yet he makes it work so wonderfully.

Title track Anomie kicks off the record with the more metallic elements at the forefront from the get go, fast paced guitars and drums play before a definite black metal vocal style comes in from Guliyev. Yet there’s more rhythm and groove here than a standard black metal song. Later on in the near ten minute epic of a song, Guliyev incorporates stereotypical eastern elements into the music, both wind and strings, creating a new vibe in the song, before it entwines itself in with the previous elements of the track, heavy vocals and all.

One thing that is of significance throughout the release, is that the vocals don’t take a forefront in the music’s layering. In many parts vocals are below the more melodic instrumentation in the mix, a very unusual idea I haven’t heard as the main effect on vocals for a record, yet it works as if Guliyev’s voice itself is just another part of the instrumentation. The record all together is a brilliant example of how modern music is constantly pushing aside creative boundaries, and Violet Cold do it to the extreme without any pitfalls.