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Planara - Hostiles (EP)

Planara hail from St.Petersburg, Russia, and are hardly a year old. Their debut
EP Hostiles combines to good effect, metal, melody and progressive influences. The EP cover with its montage of newspapers and photographs, situated below harsh strip lighting, points also to a harder edge to their music. The press release describes the band overcoming numerous obstacles to reach this point...."travelling thousands of kilometres across Russia, corruption in their local music industry, and a band member battling addiction". These experiences definitely communicate themselves in terms of the emotional impact of some of the songs on this EP.

Two top tracks on here are Enslaved and All The Right Wrongs, which combine both a catchiness and that harder edge. Enslaved the band say "is dedicated to everyone who concerns corruption and impunity of the authorities as a personal and very important problem". It has some soaring guitar work, and a thrash influence, together with some very hard hitting lyrics.

All The Right Wrongs has a real plaintive and emotional sound to the vocals, and some really nice quieter guitar passages with spoken vocals, ending with a gentle piano outro. You will be reminded a little bit of early Periphery, and this is a really enjoyable debut EP. Off the back of Hostiles there will be a genuine anticipation looking forward to what they do next, as well as a hope that they might perhaps venture to the UK for some dates. A really good debut.