Alkonost

Release date: 26.05.23 

 

For us, this provides a chance to return to our roots, to reassess the beginning of our creative existence, and forlisteners — an opportunity to enjoy their favorite songs in an updated sound, with modern arrangements and performed by leading musicians of our genre, stars of an international caliber. 

 

The album's name, translated from the original as "Songs of the Eternal Oak," sends the listener off to an image of the World Tree, which stands in the center of the Universe, and where the Alkonost Bird sings its songs, telling stories of timeless topics. 

 

The hero of the first composition, Years of Prophecy, starts thinking about his quest for truth and meaning, and finds that the surrounding everyday life cannot answer questions regarding the essence of good and evil, greatness and nothingness, and truth and lies. While seeking for answers, he looks into the past, searching for meaning in epic legends about heroes of ancient times, magi, and demiurges. In this place, the sound of horns summons warriors to battle, an endless feast of forefathers takes place, and honey flows like the rivers. 

 

But a glance through time shows the short-livedness and ephemerality of it all — of joyfulness and despair, of victory and defeat. The Vortex of Times shuffles all images and events, happiness and loss, life and death. In this vortex exists only one line, a symbol representing stability and continuity as pillars of the universe — the World Tree. All stories and songs are but a rustling in its branches. 

 

Through this album, we address metacultural roots, archetypical and meta-mythological concepts and imagery, such as those of the blacksmith, of war, and of the ancestors' revelry in the afterlife. This work deals with cultural foundations, and it will propel the listener to refer to that which one recognizes from myths, Pushkin's fairy tales, or lessons of history . . .