Review Summary: Stray dogs have been keeping the vibes up with meows
There is a famous Bulgarian proverb that says something like this: bear paws are noble only if earned through a fair fight with a bear, otherwise it is very unhonorable to use them to catch wild salmons in the river. The funny thing is, try asking Bulgarians what it means, and you'll never get two identical answers. Some young people are convinced that it's a meme that originated on TikTok, but the elders testify that it was already in vogue at the time of the Soviet Union, and therefore it might embody the socialist spirit of work aimed at the well-being of the community. We may never know the truth, maybe it's a medieval code of honor for dueling, maybe it's some sort of shibboleth to distinguish the Slavs from the Ottomans, or maybe that proverb doesn't actually exist and I just made that shit up lmao gotcha.
TDK is a Bulgarian jazzy avant-garde metal band, and if my A1 in Russian is anything to go by, Nemesta might mean something like 'Not-place', but it probably doesn't, or does it? Man, I really don't know which way to turn, but I swear I did grasp a couple of words here and there while listening to this. They definitely said 'everything' at some point, and 'beautiful', and 'sandro botticelli', so lyrics are probably interesting but how the fuсk should I know. But the music certainly is, I can tell you that, nice lush chords, some saxophone and things like that. After listening to this album multiple times, I can tell you that my least favorite thing about it is having to endure those cringy ass Spotify ads because I'm never going to pay for Premium, but other than that it's a very solid record and I want people to talk about it.
These dudes also claim to come from a separatist region called Republic of Dobrina. After a scrupulous Ecosia search, I found no matches, so I'm fairly sure that they made that shit up just like I made up that moronic proverb in the first paragraph, and this is where I can see a common thread between me and them. Two years ago at Brutal Assault I had the chance to briefly talk to the bassist Vassily Dubrovkov, he told me that making shit up is deeply ingrained in Eastern European literature. Their fellow countryman Georgi Gospodinov made a name for himself for his autofiction, because what better way is there to tell the European history of the 20th century than making up weird stories about minotaurs and time travel? Or maybe, just maybe, I actually never met their bassist and I made that shit up too. See?
Reality is an illusion, and this album reminds us of that. Reality is a non-place, a farce that we collectively decided to accept out of convenience. But behind every magic there's a trick, unless we're talking about Harry Potter, in which case behind every magic there's a transphobe, but I would be charged with second degree wokeness if I said that, so I won't. As the band says in one of these songs, stray dogs have been keeping up the vibes with meows. What does that even mean? No idea. Did I make it the fuсk up? Nope, not this time, they really say that in the song 'Ivane', and it's just weird in the best possible way. The constant feeling of confusion, of dissociation from reality, of not knowing what is real and what is fiction is what makes Eastern European art so enjoyable, and this album is no exception. Solid musicianship, original songwriting, and I'm selling four pounds of pidgeon feed if anyone is interested (let me know in my shoutbox). Production is also very good, if you consider how little known this band is.
To wrap this up, let me tell you one last thing:
