It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand lyrics, or you think that a band from Russia is not worth your attention, or you are afraid of a debut album from any young band. You will hear this very first song “Turning to Dust” (Razletajas’ v pyl’) and you will change your opinion. This song turns inside out your soul and actually proves that this disputable substance “soul” exists – you will feel it.
To tell the truth, Faktor Straha (Fear Factor) is not a new band on a stage. These musicians have played for around 10 years and they were quite known in Russia already when they decided to create this new formation, Faktor Straha (in 2004). The odd commonplace band name hided a new for Russia (that time) very interesting and emotional metal music with strong conception in lyrics. The label called it “modern metal”, but it’s close to melodic death metal and thrash metal as well. Faktor Straha has 2 vocals, growling and clean harsh male vocal. Brutal massive guitars and good drumming are softened with melodic keyboards and many vocals’ lines. There is a ballad also on the album – “Night”. The band shows a composers’ talent and also has great lyrics. They sing about wars and soul, loneliness and death, heaven and God and faith. I should admit that these guys are masters of poetry; there are so many bands with good music and boring lyrics, - Faktor Straha definitely doesn’t belong to them. Musicians have a very interesting idea and they’ve chosen a perfect form to express it. The idea, as you can see in the name of the album (“Theatre of Military Actions”), is the war. But it’s not only a usual war (if a war can be usual) with weapons, bombs, shooting each other. They also mean a war that everyone once makes in his own soul. It’s the war inside you with yourself.
This music is brutal and intense enough to show the brutality and terror of a war wherever it goes – in the field or in the soul. This music has many different voices like a war has. It has catchy rhythms and catchy, very emotional melodies, choruses that everyone can sing along (who know Russian, of course). Actually this combination of good rhythms and melodies, brutal moments from death metal, guitar riffs from thrash metal and lyrical tunes, this is maybe the secret of success of the band. Or is it the fact that mastermind of the band, Konstantin Seleznev, gets to the roots of this inner battle and these songs he composed are close to many of us?..

Написал - Onni