Rossomahaar
QUAERITE LUX IN TENEBRIS

June 2003
Released: 2003, Xtreem Music
Rating: 3.0/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

The best well-kept secret (!) of Russian Black-Thrash Metal, Rossomahaar has unleashed their 2nd full-length album through a Spanish label Xtreem Music and I´m pretty surprised how good they sound In their info sheet, their music is said to have a connection to Dimmu Borgir´s PURITANICAL EUPHORIC MISANTHROPIA in terms of perfection both in production and execution as well as influences from some early works of Greece’s Rotting Christ. Well, I partly agree with those two obvious band comparisons, but still would like to claim that Rossomahaar has also managed to stay away from a plain copycatting of those two bands in question and been able to create a sound that has their own trademark sound in it with some occasional folkish parts here and there that somehow reminded me a bit of Skyclad. There are also a notable amount of Thrash riffs present in their blackened-Thrash approach. I can say that I enjoyed playing the album two or three times in a row without even skipping songs on the disc.



To give you a better picture of the 9 songs on QUAERITE..., think of Dimmu Borgir´s more symphonic ´Black Metal´ assaults on their latest albums; strip away about 50% of all those symphonically structured, atmospheric parts they have there and replace them with a more folk-ish Thrash–orientated approach and you pretty much have the Russian blacksters Rossomahaar. I happen to like their stuff quite a lot. The guys surely know their metal; how to play it to convince a bunch of us about their skills to create passionate and hectically ravishing ´metal´, so all this info brought to you exclusively in a tiny nutshell by a weird bastard, also known under a nickname ´Luxi´, should help you to make your decision whether Rossomahaar is worth any of your attention ´coz I´m not going to say more...