format: LP
year: 1991
country: Kyrgyzstan
label: Петербургская Студия Грамзаписи
#: R60 00651
info: -
style: Heavy Metal
Side A:
Side B:
Novoe Vremia's one and only
album in all likelyhood stand alone as the representative of olde Heavy Metal vinyl from Kyrgyzstan, meaning if you like to complete the HM discographies of entire countries (like all True Collectors) you won't even need to read the review below. The rest of you posers, read on:
We're off to a good start ...and that's about it. That's the shorthand version of the review. It is a good album, and it has a start, and that start is good.
At very first listen it comes off a bit 'westernized', but I'll put that down to unfullfilled expectations. You'd think that early 90's Kyrgyz-Steel would sound more like Asparez or Varvar and less like Accept, but after consecutive spins these clouds disperse and you realize that yeah, this is unmistakenly post-CCCP Steel alright. The closest comparison would be Скорая Помощь/First Aid (because Accept, obviously), the screetchy vocals included. The sound of Novoe Vremia is a bit more developed and diverse though, and the production is actually quite good, bar the digital drum sound that in all fairness was pretty common all around the world around this time. "Vremja Ušlo" has almost all the ingredients of a solid uptempo opener: catchy verses, good guitar harmonies, interesting breaks... A slightly more memorable chorus would have been nice though.
...and that's basically the problem of the whole album. Almost all tracks are 'good' and you'll recognize many of the bits and pieces you usually in enjoy in Heavy Metal from this part of the world, but after numerous play-throughs I'll be damned if could remember one single tune well enough to spontaneously start humming it on the subway/in the shower/while scanning fanzines etc, and I'm afraid this is usually not the case with the majority of this part of my collection. Now, if you'd rather have liked a longer track-by-track review, my answer is this: The abscence of one is a review in itself.
So giving and album the notorious For-completists-only stamp usually means they're pretty bad - MUCH worse than "Novoe Vremia" in fact - but really, there are dozens of ex-Soviet Metal albums you need to add to your collection before this one. Luckily you won't have much choice in the matter since there's no way you would run into this album by mistake. However, as tempting as it is to sit here and hype every piece of rare Metal vinyl I come across as a Top 6 Shovels item, it must be said that at the time of me writing this, this LP is being offered every once in while from Russian dealers and it's not quite as Impossible To Find as it was some years ago. There were after all a full 3942 copies manufactured back in the day. On the other hand there's several dozen copies of Август's 2nd LP on sale at discogs for 1-2 euros and you'll need that gem a whole bloody lot more than this one.