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Reviews of "Hermeneutics":
English translation of the reviews from the Russian or German magazines and web-resources will be ready as soon as possible

Vox - 2004 (Russia)

Hermeneutics (gr. hermeneutike, from hermeneuo 'I explain, I interpret') is the science of texts' interpretation (chiefly ancient ones), primal meaning of which is not clear because of their antiquity or bad state of sources' preservation. One can read the definition like this in every encyclopedia. But in the context of the NORD'N'COMMANDER album (just so - Hermeneutics - the new album of the band is called) this word is acquiring additional interesting styling…
Musical aesthetics differs from the previous N'N'C blackened metal creation "Sacred Spear Aftersounds", though not so much. Folk element has practically disappeared, invading anxious wanderings of guitar-drum conglomerate with archaic melodies of flute only sometimes. But on the other hand, "industrial gnosticism" is represented greatly (in philosophical meaning, without any definite historical and stylistic parallel). Meditation keyboard interludes, sounds of battles, allusions to totalitarian marches, mysterious litanies of twilight voices flare up amid raging blackened metal like northern lights. The sense is coming that participants of the band had ecstatic desire to extend sound up to Universe and reduce it to Absolute zero simultaneously (the very Maximum that is the Minimum at the same time according to terms by Nicolaus Cusanus, philosopher of Renaissance).
Very often one may meet an attempt to recognize harmony with ratio while interpreting different texts (it's a complex of literary and music critics). But the NORD'N'COMMANDER album is on the contrary an attempt to recognize harmony with harmony and even sometimes recognize the ratio of this world by means of harmony. Hermeneutics is not writing on paper, it's writing on Soul. Those, who could feel its compresence ardently, can try to read it. Hermeneutics is understanding Music of Notes and Music of Words, i.e. Great Harmony, which shows just with magic writing through spherical essence of a person, the true Self.
How does the comprehension of Harmony occur? It occurs by means of realizing that there is no clear border between Other world and this world. This border is created only by human mind. And that "World-out-of-time is casting shadow lines" always (the composition THE OMEN I'M IN). One can feel a sphere-staircase, which unites all worlds, gathering up all material and non-material bodies, including the In-part of a person: "The staircase between all your bodies". And then in borderline state of mind, when
In twilight there is Ritual Circle with Fire…
Bodies of flame are wallowing higher and higher…
On pupils there is reflection of Words…
Volkhv appears - the inward mage edged with a sword. He gives directions how one should live in this world, how to reach harmony between the Inside and the Outside, how to protect the Self from the aggressive attack of social stereotypes. That's why the sword appears as Volkhv's aura (the composition VOLKHV).
After these directions grand journeys, which change the In-nature of a person cardinally, are coming:
1. The journey to the pole of archetypes:
My spirit is being frozen much more,
Admiring creations of moons every Midnight.
Endless Loneness is the Altar for slaughter of doubts...
(JOURNEY TO THE POLE OF ARCHETYPES).
2. The journey to the desolate thalweg when you can see the traces of Weird world and acknowledge the Riverbed of your own Anima:
Beams of your destiny are symbols and spheres.
The Riverbed of Ur-Eternal Anima will destroy atoms of fears.
A trace of God stepping somewhere...
Is darkling shadow on Luna.
(DESOLATE THALWEG).
3. The journey to Non-duality (Advaita in Hinduism), touching Great It:
We are mounting to the Abyss of boiling Blood
Through the stain, which has curdled in Space.
From the fifth heaven and lower it's too hard,
But we already see the Window where Aether is based.
(TO THE ABYSS OF BOILING BLOOD).
4. The journey to the Mistress of the Ferry, i.e. the Mistress of Death. Here your Heart is thrown into Sacred Waves for its total cleansing:
My mistress of the ferry
Is burning down the forgotten dreams
And transforming the ashes of them into my Throne.
(MISTRESS OF THE FERRY / A V NASHEGO SHUMA).
After these four journeys the drifting into sleep begins. This sleep is pessimistical because ahead there is Absolute Obscurity - Mystery, but just this Mystery is drawing on.
I am slowly drifting into sleep, drifting into pessimism and into war.
The great war with myself which has never been before.
What is it? Reincarnation or may be breaking of life and death at all?
Trying to dismiss hesitations and follow Not-Being call.
(DRIFTING INTO PESSIMISTICAL SLEEP).
The NORD'N'COMMANDER album is some kind of legendry about the real I that has eventually found itself in the centre of four elements. And it feels Great Sleep, definitely not in the sense that Soul has been tired and flaked out, but in the sense that now the Soul is conscious of the state of Absolute Sleep around itself. In this situation you come to conclusion that all is immobile in the world indeed. Some philosophers of antiquity talked about it (for example, Parmenides who stated that there was no motion at all and it was the illusion created by our imagination). The name of the last composition of the album is assignable to this cause - SCHLAFF IN ALLEM (germ. 'sleep in all')…
Will this Self return into this world for new deeds one day? It's unknown. However it's another story…

Vox
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