Čad - Medvede
By Flork!
Listening to Medvede by Čad is like having a nightmare where you are being chased, and yet as hard as you try to run, you somehow can’t move. You can’t see what is behind you, yet you know it is some kind of scary monster, perhaps a bear, and it is close behind you. You wake-up frightened and not quite sure whether it was real or not, perhaps even too scared to go back to sleep.
Medvede is a lot like this, with songs that resonate stongly throughout the subconscious that force us to confront our fears. For example, Chýbaš priateľ môj (I miss you my friend) is a track full of raw anger and powerful vocals that sounds like a Carpathian bear painfully mourning the death of its brother. In fact, the second track, V meste sú medvede (Bears in the town) is dedicated to these most-feared creatures of our forests. The band itself even describes its music as being feared by its listeners, which is exactly their aim, just like the bears we fear who come down from the hills and walk through our towns and villages at night.
The 8th album by Čad was conceived during the pandemic when no concerts could be played and hibernation was forced upon us all. I apologise at this point, I don’t mean to compare the album to the bears of Carpathia, since V meste sú medvede is the only track dedicated to them. But the album has that same intensity as when an enormous grizzly growls, while either protecting its cubs or guarding its territory, or from intense hunger after a long winter sleep, scaring you so close to death.
High intensity and powerful riffs are what rule Medvede from the first moment of the opening track. This is obviously a band with loads of experience under its belt and it is heard loud and clear in Dostal som od otca sekeru (my father gave me an axe). The album only gets better the more you listen to it, with none of the tracks lasting more than four minutes, and several of them under three. The final track, Stroskotanci (castaways) is epic, ending the album the same way we wake-up after a scary dream, wondering whether it was really just a dream or not.
Overall, the production is top-notch, but the best thing about this album is the writing of the songs – all of them were thoughtfully created and reflect the maturity of what an 8th album should sound like. Even if you don’t speak Slovak, it doesn’t matter, the songs don’t need any linguistic translation to understand them. We all communicate anger, pain, and fear the same way, whether by man or beast. 10 out of 10 for sure.
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