Album Review: Envvy – Golden Darkness
Artist: ENVVY
Title: Golden Darkness
Label: Sulphuric Darkness
Release date: February 20th, 2025
Country: Poland
Format reviewed: High-quality digital recording
Album Review: Envvy – Golden Darkness via Sulphuric Darkness by Pegah
“Golden Darkness” is the latest EP from Polish artist ENVVY, released through the Sulphuric Darkness label. This EP explores themes like loss, transformation, and alienation. The cover art itself, immediately draws the listener into the EP’s thematic world. It depicts a sorrowful-looking woman, divided between black and gold a stark visual metaphor for the coexistence of darkness and light, perhaps suggesting the eternal cycle of night and day, or even the transition between life and death. In her hands, she holds a skull, a potent symbol traditionally associated with mortality, impermanence, and the acceptance of life’s inevitable end.
‘Golden Darkness” opens with a swirl of atmospheric noise, a dense sonic fog that slowly unravels. As the distortion recedes, a distant female whisper echoes through the void fragile, ephemeral before fading into silence. This haunting introduction can be read as “A farewell to the darkness”, a symbolic gesture of stepping away from shadow and towards the promise of light. On “As The Fall of Golden Feathers”, the soundscape shifts dramatically into harsh, fractured screams, evoking a sense of violent connection and disconnection. The track places emphasis on the feather traditionally a symbol of power, wisdom, and freedom by setting its delicate imagery against abrasive textures. This sharp contrast highlights the duality between fragility and strength. Yet as the track progresses, the intensity softens; by the end, the sounds unravel into lighter, more flowing elements, as if a feather were finally surrendering to the currents of the wind.
“Nostalgic, Yet Destructive Void” With a calmer, softer soundscape, a wistful yet ruinous void emerges, where paradoxical emotions intertwine, like recalling a memory that feels at once bittersweet and devastating. Then, on “Like Two Souls in One Body”, the harsh sonic textures return, yet they are tempered by the reappearance of the woman’s whisper, creating a fragile balance. This track seems to allude to the concept of ‘soul dualism’ the belief that an individual possesses two souls: one bound to the body and the other free, unrestricted by the limits of time and space. Through the tension between abrasive and ethereal elements, the music mirrors this dual existence, evoking the struggle between the earthly and the infinite within a single being.
“Devilishi Noir”, the final and bonus track of “Golden Darkness”, serves as a grim conclusion to the EP’s journey. The soundscape descends into chaos dissonant, fragmented, and oppressive while the whispered vocals weave through the noise, embodying the confusion and despair of urban existence. Together, they portray a vision of the city as a decaying labyrinth, where isolation, madness, and moral collapse reign. The track not only narrates the end of the story but also leaves the listener submerged in the unresolved tension between darkness and whatever faint trace of light may still exist. 7.5/10
7.5/10 Victory is possible
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