Trigger Warning: In this review there are mentions of historical events of very violent nature, including some that have been recognised as war crimes and crimes against humanity. If these topics constitute a trigger for you (and considering today's state of the world, I couldn't blame you), please don't continue reading.
This is not my first encounter with Angelwail's music, and I had really enjoyed the previous release that I have reviewed. Therefore, my expectations for this new single were quite high. The track (which is divided in three sub-tracks but is also available as a single 7-minute long piece) is dark and gloomy, with a strong cinematic attitude. There is a persistend aura of tragedy and despair that filters through the cold notes of the strings and the cloudy chords of the synths. The music itself is delicate and gentle, but it's the delicacy of the tears that caress your cheeks when you have no will left to even wipe them. The melodies are beautiful, but it's the beauty of the flower that salutes the sun for the last time before abandoning itself to withering.
My first couple of listens were done blindly, without no knowledge of the context, but even then I figured out that such heavy hearted music could only come from a place of real grief. For this reason, I felt the need to know more about the origin of this track.
The title seems to refer to the Katyn massacre, a mass excecution of Polish military officers ordered by the Stalin regime, and to the forest where the mass graves were discovered in 1943. The first act of the single in facts contains a recital of the poem "Elegia o chłopcu polskim" (Elegy for a Polish Boy) by the polish war poet Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, whose lyrics do not leave too much room for interpretation.
After reading about these atrocities, I feel the need to thank Angelwail for creating this music. I need to thank them because they reminded us that art is one of the few things that can save us from becoming numb and desensitised to the countless acts of cruelty that our species is committing everyday. We need artists like Angelwail that can channel the dark feelings and make something beautiful out of them. It won't erease the tragedy, but it will remind us of our own humanity, which nowadays is something we need with increasing urgency.
