Track By Tracks: IGNEA - Bestia (Split w/ ERSEDU) (2021)

The EP starts with two songs by IGNEA. Bosorkun is an intense fast-paced track that sounds like the Carpathian wind: fierce and chill, rapid and still, unpredictable and changing, unstoppable, powerful, yet lighter than feathers. According to Ukrainian mythology, Bosorkun is an evil mountain spirit who kills with the power of the wind and sends drought and illnesses to people and animals. In IGNEAs’ song though, he’s a ‘spirit with a kind but destructive nature’ who wants to make friends with humans and trade his immortality for their world.

The second track is sung on behalf of the Slavic valkyrie, the winged, warlike, cloud maiden, the daughter of the Thunderer Perun — Magura. With her wings, she overshadows the brave soldiers fallen on the battlefield, touches their lips, and gives them the living water to drink from a golden cup. This is how these soldiers end up in Vyriy, the heavenly palace for eternal life. In Magura’s Last Kiss, Magura is fed up with wars and says that ‘peace can be bold and knightly’. To end all fightings, she kisses herself, goes to Vyriy herself.

Mermaids is a song about Ukrainian mavkas (sirens) who cannot find their place anywhere: neither on the shore nor in the waters. Just like humans, they are bored when their life is in balance, and they’re trapped in the problems that they create on their own. This song features both bands and is also accompanied by a video.

The second part of the EP consists of ERSEDU’s two songs about the dual nature of the world. Black Garden tells the story of Zmiy, the Ukrainian dragon who could destroy and poison the gardens and lands but also take away disasters from humans. Seduction of the girl by Zmiy is a popular folklore plot, and this is what actually happens in the song: Zmiy seduces the girl with his black love and she accepts him, dissolving in his nature.

The Eaters of the Sun is a cosmogonic myth about the ambivalence of kindness and evil, light and darkness, the neverending cycle of day and night. The Sun — the embodiment of the supreme god and goodness, blind obedience to dogmas — can burn and destroy lives. Darkness — the personification of evil and independence — can save from the deadly blinding light, become a savior and ensure critical thinking. The Eaters of the Sun is the hymn of balance and rational human who accepts light and darkness as his parts, and himself as the part of Cosmos and bestial creatures.