Across The Rubicon is a Polish newborn band with members of Cold Fusion and Rukkanor (among others). It has just issued its first album of 10 neoclassical martial industrial assaults. At the first look, we gaze at the simple yet so efficient design of the booklet: beautiful blue/grey pictures, cloudy skies, marmoreal coldness and uncertain harvest… The quality of the music however is rather a certainty!
“Soldat Inconnu” is introduced with a sample of a French military song: sadly the quality sounds to be a bit 128 kbp/s, but it isn’t that noticeable and it just has not weight compared to what is going to follow… A bit like Karjalan Sissit massively percussive neoclassical music, the first song is depicts a musical battlefield with mighty tunes, rather sophisticated rythm/percussions, sporadic males choirs’ samples. It’s powerful, it’s massive, quite dark, heavy. What many are actually seeking in martial indus neoclassical! “Shadows and Lust” goes on with rhythmical shocks and ambient percussions. The music has got calmer, still the same tune is used. It sounds simplier than Triarii, both in terms of melocid layers and in tunes. The comparision might however be relevant. Tunes are shorter, often minimalistic atmospheres are created just with some percussions, repeated autoritarian samples and choirs.
“Dogs of War” first part “Haram” is softer, calmer, with some bombing samples, a melancholic atmosphere, and still the same drums/timbals. But, after a blank and a whisper, “Song of the Dead” begins with a lone trumpet and sparse lugubrious bells… A much more ambient direction has been chosen here with some blanks, sudden orchestral jumps, oriental samples – whose reference to recent events cannot be avoided. Back in the same approach as the 2nd track, rather soft, “State of Fear” improves this allegory of a marching army… But, melody has become more anxious. Lower samples phrases the whole, while the sounds are quite raw here: slightly metallic noises, low drums, original compared to usual ones of the genre.
“The World in Flames” keep on with this progression in hell. Some gratings of tanks caterpillar tracks even show some movements… In Slaughter Natives cannot be avoided as a comparision here. Dark synths, heavy and steady percussions, sick melody, similar stretched cymbals playing with stereo, similar structure and atmosphere… Not a copycat: an excellent surprise! A threatheing track, clear hybridation between ambient and martial indus. “Strength and Honour” progresses now in the same direction with an even more excessive and stressful atmosphere… We’re getting closer from the front as fast as a wounded burdened man… Metallic noises and detonations shake “The Rage”, a track almost emptied from any melody but some brief pieces. Here we’re closer from Karjalan Sissit’s uncompromising brutality, although the atmosphere developed by this track is softer, more melodic, more ‘cinematographic’, less insane.
“Death Smiles to Us All” sounds rather as a meeting with death, for the melody has got calmer than in the previous tracks. Threatening trumpets, deep percussions and sulphurous samples, which are as usual never too loud, build an highly expressive ensemble, even with violins and other fineries. We may however feel at that moment that the whole album is repetitive and regret it… But, “The Culture War”, with its sophisticated perfect sounding percussions, is a very opportune piece for it’s different from the previous tracks. We can gaze the gregorian singings’ samples very well arranged with the rest of the melody, opening a beautiful (post-)spiritual depth… “We Shall Remember”, as the previous track, summarizes a bit many elements already used on this album, but here they’re magnified… A beautiful melody surges from the brutal and massive rhythmics, distant samples and barbarian brass section. Although dealing with a remembrance of a dead-and-burried past, the atmosphere seems to portend a dark and defeatist future, as a repetition of what ever was… And ever should be?
The introductory sample’s low quality, banal synths and repetitiveness are the very rare flaws we could point on this album. All the rest sounds as having been carefully arranged: samples are just the loudness required, percussions are varied and unusually rich and inovating, brutality stays united with sensitive melodies. It sounds as a soundtrack of a multi-oscarized movie, but such one has never been seen in the box office, yet… Both grandeur and decadence of a warlike “Elegy” are successfully praised to the skies by its skilled Polish creators… And these skies aren’t clear but ambiguous, as on the pictures of the booklet: is it before or after the storm? Will we see the sun again? No doubt that many fans of martial music will appreciate this “Elegy”. Pardon me this hasty risky forecast, but I just wouldn’t be surprised at all if “Elegy” is the indus/martial highlight of this year! Simply delightful.
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