Bandcamp There is no separating Dymna Lotva’s music from where it comes from. Composer Jauhien Charkasau and vocalist Katsiaryna Mankievich built the band in Minsk, marched against Lukashenko with a hundred thousand others, were banned from performing, and fled to Poland when the regime came for the people it could not silence. As of late 2025 the Belarusian state officially brands them an “extremist group.” Vyraj, named for the mythic Slavic otherworld where birds and souls winter, is the sound of that exile: post-black metal reaching for the folklore of a homeland its makers cannot safely enter.
That grief gives the record its power, and the band are wise enough to voice it in contrast rather than sheer force. Over and over Vyraj pulls back from the harsh walls into hall-drenched acoustic guitars, strings and multi-tracked chants, and those passages are where it truly moves. “Ustań Za Mianie” is the clearest example, dynamic and un-crushed, clean-guitar breaks opening into pressurised heights with Eastern-European folk woven right through it. The two guest tracks are the emotional peaks: “The Boat of Despair” brings in My Dying Bride’s Aaron Stainthorpe, his mournful baritone trading with the growls in full gothic-doom register, and the closer “Return My Coffin Home” (with Ingvarr) is the album’s most organic and beautiful moment, an unhurried atmospheric folk-metal dirge that breathes where the rest of the record pushes.
The push is the catch. Too many of the heaviest passages are mastered into a loud, dense wall, the low mids stacking around 250 to 500 Hz until the bass loses its knurl and the cymbals sharpen at the top, and the drums read as heavily processed. It is the modern-metal loudness reflex applied to music that would hit harder with more air, and it flattens some of the micro-dynamics the quiet passages get so right. The songs and the feeling survive it, but the ceiling on the master keeps the biggest moments from opening up the way the acoustic ones do.
Vyraj is a towering, grief-struck, folklore-rich post-black record made by people with more reason than most to mean every note, and when Dymna Lotva let the folk and the silence do the work it is genuinely stirring. Come for the Stainthorpe duet and the aching closer, stay for a band who turned exile into something monumental. One of the more moving records to cross the desk this month, loudness and all.
Post-black metal shot through with Slavic folk, atmospheric strings and acoustic passages, strongest in its contrasts. “Ustań Za Mianie” is dynamic and un-crushed, clean-guitar breaks opening into pressurised heights with Eastern-European folk woven through. The guest tracks are the peaks: “The Boat of Despair” brings My Dying Bride’s Aaron Stainthorpe trading a mournful baritone with growls in gothic-doom register, and the closer “Return My Coffin Home” (feat. Ingvarr) is the most organic moment, an unhurried atmospheric folk-metal dirge with real headroom. The reservation is the mastering: too many heavy passages are pushed into a loud dense wall, low mids stacking 250 to 500 Hz until the bass loses its knurl and cymbals sharpen, drums reading heavily processed. The loudness reflex flattens micro-dynamics the quiet passages nail. Feeling and songs survive it; the biggest moments would open up with more air.
Standout tracks: The Boat of Despair, Return My Coffin Home, Ustań Za Mianie
