01. The Crying Room
02. I Am
03. Life Of A Window
04. Anhedonia
05. Pendulum
06. Charade
07. Bridle
08. Pullover
09. She’s Walking Down
10. Midnight Minuet
There’s a lot of good doom metal out there that falls on the lighter, rockier side – psychedelic rock given a bit of extra volume, some old-school heavy metal darkness, maybe an anachronistic darkwave spice. On first impressions, that’s where I placed The Yagas, but I’m now more convinced that this is the dark 2000s alt version of doom.
Midnight Minuet does call to mind bands like Avatarium, Jex Thoth, Blood Ceremony, Jess And The Ancient Ones, and so on; its crunchy riffs, energetic rock rhythms, and slightly delirious vocals have that kind of psychedelic doom flavor, a dramatic retro package you could enjoy alongside Messa or Ghost. But the deeper The Yagas delve into the sounds that project this heady occult darkness, the less precise these comparisons feel. Where I instead place the roots of this album is with bands like The Birthday Massacre, Kidneythieves, Dope Stars Inc., Emilie Autumn, or Stolen Babies: a gloomily appointed haze of oozy synths, clear yet haunting vocal melodies, and intermittent industrial flourishes over a pessimistic alternative rock base. It’s a cool sound, this quintessentially MySpace-era pastiche of post-grunge, darkwave, and electronic emo cabaret, and its fusion with certain facets of doom metal allows it to kick in enough good riffs and aggressive choruses that I have no qualms about reviewing this on a metal website (not that we’re the most punctilious curators anyway).
In service of that nu-noir aesthetic, synthesizer use is artfully controlled: each song benefits in some way from the synthetic twilight that it conjures, and usually in a slightly different setting, so while the synth is clearly a cornerstone of the band’s sound, it’s tweaked regularly so that its consistency does not flounder into repetition. “Pullover” even pulls back into a regular piano sound, and throwing that into the grooves with some very tasteful guitar riffing creates a kind of evil Crowded House feeling, almost like gothic grunge. “Life Of A Widow” makes some of the best use of the synths, in a way that highlights one of the more unique qualities of The Yagas: the song opens with the synths oscillating in and out of tune, creating a pleasant disconcerting effect, and from time to time the vocals join in to blur the certainty otherwise afforded by the heavy guitars and rhythm section. The delicate touch of an off tone throws you just a bit, and that slight warping results in an eerie, otherworldly feeling that the band is able to harness at various points throughout the album.
While I find myself mostly looking forward to the weird and moody synths on each playthrough (I don’t listen to nearly enough stuff with strong synth applications), the vocals supply another vital strength of Midnight Minuet. Vera Farmiga’s approach typically goes for clarity, with a strong, insistent tone, often rising into a frantic wail that remains, it seems, in her middle range, and thus retains a powerful base; there are points where this gels more ambivalently with the esoteric dreariness of the instrumentation, but on the whole they’re blended quite well, and I find myself noticing the aforementioned disjuncture as a strength from song to song. “Pendulum” provides a good showcase as Farmiga slowly gets wilder and wilder, introducing more distortion and adhering less and less to melody as the song builds to its end. “She’s Walking Down” throws in a new hook by adding some robot/alien vocal processing to contrast with the desperate cleans, and with the breakbeat/industrial approach to percussion and the fast pace of the riffs, it becomes a very successful rendition of the electro-heavy mélange.
I generally enjoy The Birthday Massacre – I own at least one of their albums, I’ll throw them on in the background sometimes – but for whatever reason I struggle to keep their songs in my brain, and this has been much of my experience in that realm of sound. It rarely rises beyond atmosphere. I find that Midnight Minuet fits a niche that I haven’t been able to fill very successfully, and for that reason alone I’m enthusiastic about the future of this band. There is some added excitement in finding that The Yagas stand perfectly well on their own, even without the novelty of Vera Farmiga being a prominent Hollywood actress. I admit to some degree of skepticism going into this – when a project with this kind of novelty reaches my ears, I usually brace myself for passable but generic hard rock that doesn’t quite tip the metal scale and doesn’t warrant the hype. But after however many rounds with Midnight Minuet, I find it an unusual and unearthly alternative album with enough metal punch to earn its place; The Yagas are a real band, that is to say a union of serious musicians who are trading on their own talent, not their preexisting star power. The same is true of Farmiga individually, who proves her mettle as a frontwoman and even treats us to some of her native Ukrainian on “I Am”.
The reason I learned about The Yagas, and the obvious selling point, is that the singer is a celebrity from an entirely different field, and a pretty popular one at that. But you don’t hear somebody’s career on an album; you hear music, and that’s where the test is. The Yagas pass, and I hope that we can look forward to more of this in the future. This is easily the best album ever released by a cast member of The Departed.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 8 |
| Songwriting: | 8 |
| Originality: | 7 |
| Production: | 8 |
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Written on 31.05.2025 by
I’m the reviewer, and that means my opinion is correct. |