Guliyev has been candid about his difficulties with monetizing music, and his strong moral compass and ardent activism have angered more than a few fashies, nationalists, and general haters – and, no doubt, have attracted progressive fans who might be inherently suspicious of a black metal-adjacent project. Pissing off corpse-painted connoisseurs with a decidedly unconventional approach to black metal is one thing, but Guliyev the person is just as unconventional as Violet Cold the band. The suite bursts to the seams with gleaming ambient vistas, synthwave cruisers, and more than a few blackened accents in other words, a harbinger of a certain 2021 release.
There is no preset point of entry for the neophyte to approach Violet Cold‘s discography a few of my esteemed EIN colleagues recommend euphoric post-black stunner Magic Night, but I’d encourage new listeners to tackle the mighty genre cornucopia that is the Sommermorgen trilogy. It’s been exhilarating to watch Guliyev’s artistic career blossom: fans speak longingly of each of his ambient, post-rock, and blackgaze periods (we are canonically in the latter) and, to paraphrase my above hyperlink, the dude’s Bandcamp page literally scrolls. Emin Guliyev, who appears to have discovered a cure for writer’s block, has skipped, tumbled, and somersaulted across broad swaths of musical territory since he started the one-person project in the mid-2010s. Of course, a record can fall flat Icarus-style no matter how audacious the artist’s intentions are (shit has to sound good, too), but I’ll always have instant respect for artists who reshape musical boundaries while discussing salient real-world themes all the while, even if the end musical product is not perfect. A brave artist might obliterate a musical frontier, embody a deeply held message, or both in any case, a bold new release stakes the artist’s reputation – not to mention financial well-being – on an idea of potentially high personal value.
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