heavy-metal-darkness: Vøvk | Litera

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Vøvk | Litera | Kontrabass

Release Date: October 3, 2025

Format: Digital

Genre: Progressive Rock/Post-Hardcore

Country: Ukraine

Kyiv’s Vøvk returns with their second full-length album, “Litera”, a concept-driven work that binds together emotion, symbolism, and the raw pulse of Ukraine’s current era. The trio has always balanced structure with emotional chaos, and this time they sharpen that contrast through a story told in cycles, drought, fire, flood, renewal, and back to drought again. It’s less an album of separate tracks and more an emotional landscape shaped by shifting seasons and inner weather.

From the first minutes, “Litera” opens like a ritual. The atmosphere is thick, driven by earthy percussion and layers of guitar that feel organic and unforced. The production by Roman Bondar (Lizard Audio, Kyiv) gives the songs a physicality, every bassline hits with the pulse of a living organism, every drumbeat like a heartbeat echoing in the soil. The sound is neither minimal nor overblown, just dense enough to hold its weight.

Vøvk’s songwriting walks a line between accessibility and experimentation. The band draws inspiration from sources like Mastodon, The Mars Volta, and Deafheaven but never mimics them. The songs rise and fall in unpredictable waves, sometimes glowing with melody, sometimes dark and jagged. The rhythm section holds everything together with a quiet precision, even when time signatures twist in unexpected ways. The guitar lines act less as leads and more as moving textures, guiding the listener through each transformation.

The presence of guest musicians brings depth rather than decoration. Johannes Persson (Cult Of Luna) appears on “Promin”, his deep voice adding gravity to the song’s portrayal of perseverance and love for one’s homeland. “Okean”, with Anton Slepakov, closes the album in an introspective tone, tying the story back to its beginning. The use of choir and spoken word parts adds warmth and humanity, making the album’s concept feel communal, not just personal.

This is not an easy-listening album, and its rhythm is that of inner struggle, sometimes repetitive, sometimes chaotic, always honest. What keeps “Litera” engaging is its sense of movement. The awareness that destruction and rebirth are intertwined. There are no grand conclusions, only cycles that keep turning, like the seasons or history itself.

For a band coming from a country living through war, “Litera” feels like a quiet act of endurance. It’s poetic without being pretentious, heavy without being oppressive. Vøvk has crafted an album that speaks less through words and more through textures and emotions. It doesn’t reach transcendence, but it remains deeply human, a mirror to the world’s instability and a reminder that renewal always begins in silence.

Score: 7.2