Faded Colors: ‘Make Your Pain Yourself’

Review By Paul Taggart

Faded Colors are one of those random acts I stumbled over, either through a random Spotify deep dive or maybe randomly scrolling through the Metallum website. They are a Moscow based depressive black metal band who formed in 2023. They have managed three albums to date, of  which guitarist Graf Akinetos appears to have mostly crafted on his own. However, the current material appears to be recorded as a three-piece, with a fourth album Morgellons Disease due self-released digitally in late February.

I have enjoyed Faded Color’s previous material. There is an aggressive melancholy to their extreme sound, their music videos are typically made of urban blight and malaise, centered around possible booze and narcotic misery. So less frozen-winter  forests in Norway  and more downtown Moscow on a Saturday night. ‘Make Your Pain Yourself’ is the second song released in advance of the new album and is typical of their song style. Guitars that sound like angry wasps buzz slowly whilst Akinetos shrieks like a ghoul, while a slow drumbeat pounds out a martial rhythm beneath it all. Dungeon synths occasionally rise out of the black metal haze, along with an extended outro made up of mangled audio samples, that seem to merge an American 911 call and some kind of weird vocal effect, then churning guitars fade out with an acoustic guitar then fighting with buzzing static and then it suddenly stops. There is a distinct random oddball nature to the band’s sound that stands them out from the crowd.

This track won’t be for everyone. Might only be for lunatics like me.

https://fadedcolorsbm.bandcamp.com