Soom is an experimental metal trio from the city of Kharkiv in the Ukraine. The band’s 2018 LP Djebars, out on Russia’s addicted label, is a soul crushing amalgam of dark ambient, heavy doom, psychedelic sludge, and Ukrainian folk. The kind of disorienting brew that should come with a health warning, this 74-minute long-player surprises at every turn.
This week the band released a new video for the track “Wheelchair.” Directed by Anastasia Khomenko, the visuals are an homage to the band’s home city of Kharkiv. In addition, they tell the story of Djebars, a man stuck permanently in the web of time at nineteen hours and thirty-six minutes.
Discussing the visuals, Soom’s frontman Oleksa Kovalov-Blidyi adds to the video’s allegory by explaining that it is about the search for a drug’s “hiding place” using a “wheelchair”—”bad-quality synthetic drugs.” Far from a moralistic approach to the subject matter, though, Kovalov-Blidyi asks for what he calls “…a Pale aesthetic. It is neither light nor dark, just immersed in its own Universe.” Cutting to the quick, the band’s frontman adds that for one the experience might be “self-destruction,” but for another “salvation.” Who is really to say, as we each have our own path to the “All & Nothing.”
