Лихо by CHUR

2009 CD remastered in 2013 by Dabloid. Full album with bonuses + cover booklet scan.

CHUR "Lykho" album's conception

Introduction: Lyre Player
It contains a phrase from a repertoire of a narrator (“lyrnik” or “boyan”) of folk tales. The phrase means word for word: “Where is justice? Is it alive or dead? Why that blatant injustice seized the whole world?”

Lykho (both misfortune/trouble and an allegorical mythical negative personage)
This song describes the problems of Ukraine nowadays in a folkish allegorical and ironic manner: a loss of moral principles under the influence of globalization, youths’ renunciation of folk traditions, and destruction of an institute of marriage. A situation in the country is compared with a situation in a family when a strange woman makes drunkards of children and robs their house, and these children turn their mother out of the house and spend their time drinking uninterruptedly, bashing their father about.

Brothers
An image of a man, a warrior, is of great importance for the culture of European nations, and his symbol is a wolf. So, a pack of wolves is doomed to perish without males – hunters and defenders, in the same way, a nation is doomed to die out without warriors - protectors. As the national independence embodied in men, who are able to defend the interests of their Family-Kin-Homeland independently, disturbs the majority of government institutions, nowadays a mentally sane and physically normal mature man is a party, which is the most unprotected by the Law and any religion. But besides a physical aspect, this problem has also an esoteric aspect – in Europe a ritual of transformation (initiation) of an irresponsible youth into a real Man always involved wolves. Youths fought with wolves, and their spilled blood was blended in a fight as a symbol of fraternization. Probably, the fortunes of European nations and wolf populations in Europe are bound up with each other more closely than we can imagine. This song is a kind of a charm/a spell to be sung by a male to save wolves/brothers from extermination.

Mara
It is a conversation of a dead man with Mara, the Goddess of Death. He asks her: “Did I live in the right way? Did I live defending the interests of my Kin indeed?” Mara replies, that he spent too much time and power fighting against enemies, and as a result, he managed to learn enemy customs and culture thoroughly, and at the same time he gave nothing to the culture of his own nation, and he created nothing for his progeny to be proud of.

Sky
It is a monologue of a warrior dying on a battlefield. He talks to the sky, and it seems to him that the sky is a gate opening in front of him.

Mother
It is a lullaby for Mother Earth. A female singer asks Mother for forgiveness for all the harm that her children (mankind) did to her, and comforts her saying that it is not much time left to suffer.

Fight With Me!
The song describes a crucial point in the history of Rus’ – a change of the state power of Svyatoslav, a representative of traditional Slavonic culture, by the power of his son Vladimir, who started his violent implanting of an alien religion and culture and initiated the decay of legendary might of Slavonic nations.

Spell
From the high antiquity till nowadays the Slavs keep up traditions hiding talismans with protective incantations into the clothes of their children taking the road to war. These talismans are intended for protection against all kinds of weapons and death itself. The invulnerability of warriors, being protected by these charms, is denoted in speech as “protection by means of charms”. The song repeats phrases of such incantations that saved thousands of forefathers’ lives during WW II.

Spring
Death is just a phase of life. Namely about it, this song is, although it describes a beautiful girl, the Spring, who goes across a flowering field, where people die.

CHUR is a Ukrainian Folk Metal band with many folk instruments and mostly clean vocals.

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