Hail to melancholiacs and man-haters as well as suiciders and neo-metallers and just unhappy persons, contemplating the song of morose souls of creators of this site! 

New stories ("Lodge", "Yard", "Homo Sapiens?", "The mystery of Lindschteins", "Sopor" and "A Laughing Beggar") will come soon...

Saint-Petersburg: The Obvodny Channel - George: Place of a meeting can't be changed.

Dreams of Katatonia - visual loneliness... Images on the subject of Katatonia music. 

Lost - Dark Abbot: my first story with mystical elements, it recounts sweden misanthrope Bjorn Larsen, who had his reasons to hate life & live in loneliness, mainly being awake at nights and who finally commited felo de se. 

l i n k s: 

The Katatonia Shrine - official Katatonia website, maintained by comrade Forlorn Soul. It is distinguished with its thought-out design, firmly consistent with 'night-style' of "Tonight's Decision". I have evidently adopted much from this site (lack of logic in choosing main sections for example)
Diabolical Masquerade - official homepage of Blackheim's side-project "Diabolical Masquerade", for which the same Forlorn Soul takes responsibility
Gothic.ru - Russian Gothic Project. A very interesting resource, praising consumptive & neurasthenic (sometimes schizophrenic) gothic subculture. In other words - unresurrected romanticism. Insistently recommended are literature & cinema sections. Music area is rather eclectic, every performer with caught 'obscure intonations' is certainly considered to be a dusty exhibit of 'la chambre de la musique gothique'. However, it's a matter of taste. By the way, there are beautiful paintings of asylum patients (I don't know, where do they get'em, but when you look at them, there's such a feeling, similar maybe to scanning negatives). But the most astonishing is that site is being updated
Musica.Mustdie - mass portal, combinig all the tendencies in (not)modern metal music. There are sometimes very interesting reviews and descriptions of gifted authors to be found behind thrash, power and all that kind... Local messageboard is of certain interest, where not only hair length & discrimination of metallers are discussed, but also some deserving subjects. Very good severe design, performed by some Yarri, a metaller.
Dark Side - imposing democratic but slow site, dedicated to the most noble manifestations in doom, black, death, gothic and dark music styles. Design is bombastic, obscure and antediluvian as an old cemetery. Among the rest dignities we can distinguish a section, dedicated to some band called Katatonia
Seempieces - Site of a marvellous painter Travis Smith, who makes bewitching surreal images out of photos, paintings and Photoshop filters. Our site is also a dedication to this man - you know, that was very him who worked at design of last Katatonia, Opeth, November Doom, Trail of Tears albums...
Raison d'Etre and Side Projects - "...this is the most mad-driving band that I know. Its insanity is clear and honest. It seems he (George: Peter Andersson) is either total schizophrenic either god. I can't understand at all, how a mortal man can create so complicated, chaotic and at the same time musical compositions..." (c) Dmitriy Ignashoff
"...There, far off, where exist no people...Only dying working mechanisms amid invaiding from every quarter all-absorbing emptiness..." (c) Lur
"... This (George - Stratvm Terror) is not music, no doubt, this is something absolutely different... This is the most horrifying thing I've ever heard in my life. A desert, baking sun, a factory, covered with sand and fulvous of rust keeps on it's senseless activity... No people left, only flinders of putrid metal mixed up with white bones of former 'life masters' scattered about the factory backyard, near the ramshackle storehouse. Empty eyesockets of a skull, lying next to 52nd size spanner, show black. People have reached what they'd wanted, production lasts for ever, they are no more needed. In the last episode (track named 'Pulp Extortion') some precisious machine methodically scoops up brain out of my head with a manipulator lookin' like a spoon. I don't understand what's happening, I can't resist, all my wishes disappear in some inconceivable way. My sound perception ceases with the last spoon of brain. I'm dead. Only Mechanisms left..." (c) Mr Mozart
"...obtrusive associations for some 'raison' with old center of Petersburg, all these gnashes, vague sewer sounds, chorales, bells swinging on the wind... There are also no people in my Petersburg. None of a man, none of stalls, almost without electricity. Cars are not riding in the streets. City is rusting and decaying, the sun never shines in it, there's only one season - like today. Properly speaking, this is seemingly not Petersburg at all, though there is inevitably something in common, that's why I named it conditionally so..."
Now I know: there are much more manifestations of Raison d'Etre, and some of them create so somber feeling landscapes that I won't talk about them. To conceive The Sense Of Existence is to see The Vertical, stretching into the cold gloom of Infinity; it is surrounded with rings - projects. These are Cycles, starting with bright & clear like Atomine Electrine and finishing with most severe like Stratum Terror, whose shapes are washed away in darkness...
Rapture - a finnish band which has a bad reputation of "Brave Murder Day" plagiarist. In actual fact it is not so banal, the band is interesting to be heared
Sopor Aeternus "...Very, very interesting creation. I suppose that I haven't heard anything so much depressive and bewitching at the same time. This singularity, funnily enough, may possibly be concerned with 'asexualily' of band's vocalist and frontman. This is like a many-voiced and versatile weeping (but really it's one voice)... You must hear it, it can't be conveyed by the words unless by weeping... A kind of pain, complete anguish, everything comes through the pain, every sound and voice and all the instruments... But it's beautiful...." (с) Stormbringer
Marilyn Manson - This goth-rock band, heared by almost everybody and liked by almost nobody in the person of pale-faced vocalist Brian Warner displays inconstancy itself. All this diabolical masquerade (he-he) accompanied by acts of sodomy with the angels of human virtues (archangel Gabriel's nightmare), self-torture in style of free interpretation of the bestseller "Witchhammer" and other lovely erotic perversions to the accompaniment of solid depressive music, creates peculiar dark atmosphere which I love so much
MayheM  1  | 2 - founders of so called second wave of black metal and leaders of norwegian unformal union The Black Circle. Cult deadmen Oystein Aarseth and Pelle Ohlin played in this band. The band always exceled in advancement of their main ideologic component - the death. Mayhem exists nowadays consisting of Hellhammer, Necrobutcher, Maniac, Blasphemer. They are going to release a new album in the nearest future, but this is not that old Mayhem which was the most bloody band in the whole black metal history
Burzum The most nonordinary project in the whole black metal history, still bringing about by pagan killer Christian (Varg) Vikernes , who succeed in combining music-making with  serving his time in jail. Vargning: Burzum is not recommended for audition to the persons with unstable and unsteady mentality because of possible reactions, adequate to this music.
Anathema  - one of the most original metal bands in our time. They are smashing doom-death, but early vocal sometimes turned to nearly death-black. Extremely individual and have enough of imitators among the beginners. Their last album, "Judgement", has  aroused very contradictory discords: some affirmed that Anathema has exhausted itself and "The Silent Enigma" album times are gone, othes state on the contrary that Anathema is very progressive and not marking time. We won't discuss who's right & who's wrong, everybody has his own tastes after all. But as for the last work (I mean not forever but for today), "Judgement" is remarkable for strong cogitation and sorrow, especially touching is the song "Deep". By the way, after this album some people began to compare Anathema with Katatonia, or rather "Judgement" with "Tonight's Decision". In my opinion this is silly, mistakenly to compare bright Anathema sorrow to suicide Katatonia depression
Hecate Enthroned - you know, there's such a band Cradle of Filth? So, some time, somebody, whether one or two members of Hecate Enthroned were included there, but then they had a kind of unpleasant talk with Danny and left the band. And they began playing black, beautiful, satanic, with corpsepaints (by the way, I think their colouring is the most impressive on the modern black metal scene, especially their bassist Dilan's ). Well, the times of "Upon Promeathean Shores" '95 and The "Slaughter Of Innocence" '97 albums can be called bright days of Hecate... Then they released '98 album which was from rumors worse than previous ones, but still containing a couple of original tricks. And then came the day of year 1999 from birth of nazarene, when "Kings Of Chaos" was released. Don't expect me to condemn this album - no, this is not a polemics of malicious blackers on mankubus' webpages, this is a review. I must say we've got no more former Hecate Enthroned, so what do we have? We have fully acceptable black only without that malevolent agression, so intriguing for many on "Upon Promeathean Shores". This doesn't show pauperization of spirit, no, guys just changed their style and tried on new arrangements. What about it? There're a lot of examples! Our all-over-beloved Katatonia, Emperor (my black favourites), the same Cradle of Filth and even eerie & agressive Immortal. But it's ok, if they decided to experiment, let'em continue, maybe a new generation of heavy music will come out of such giving a dare to foundations 
Theatre of Tragedy - What would be Theatre Of Tragedy without Liv Kristine? What would be theatre in general without Shakespear? From the debut album this band has compelled to bring attention of adherents of new-fashioned at that time style doom metal. The band found its merited popularity in many respects because of wonderful soprano of vocalist Liv Kristine, singing nowadays in her talentless hubby's band Atrocity. It might seem that it is hard to create something more significant after "Velvet Darkness They Fear", but..."Aegis" album became an apogee of sorrowful stagings in one of the ancient English dialects. Organic interlacing of gothic and doom, polyphonic daintiness and melodic primitivism, Liv's soprano and Raymond's growling. Dear comrades blackers, remember - "Aegis" CD is the best 8th March present for a woman! Waiting for a new album. No comments...(Oct,2000)
Saturnus - lovely danes, cool doom (recommend to everybody, especially debut album '97 "Paradise Belong To You" - just a plague!). The zest is in my opinion in that the guys decided to play exactly doom, i.e. distillation of tears, snot and depression. Well, successfully enough, especially good are the birds singing after every song. In 2000 album there're a lot of changes, it's like doom is dominant, but there're some elements of gothic, particularly in lyrics, but I think many tricks are taken from "Paradise Belong To You". A usual matter - bands, not always able to make clear masterpiece after a successful debut, are filching tricks from it. But trere's a number of new moments, in particular less overfalls from quite to hard music, this may show toughening. But as for me, I like this album and as I've said, I recommend to listen to their first work, anyway it's better than the same year Theatre Of Tragedy opus "A Rose For The Dead" (George: completely different bands)
Emperor - one of the most classic black metal bands not only in Norway but throughout the world. They began directly under the iron palm of Euronimous, the same way as Burzum, Immortal, Arcturus, Dark Throne, Satyricon & many others. In 1997 their album "Anthems to the welkin at dusk" was given the rank of year's best black metal release. It shows the exemplary classics of sympho-black worth only good responces. They widened black metal scope on their last album "IX Equilibrium" striking into virtuosity of playing. Anyway, Emperor always was and will be one of  the founders of  glorious style called BLACK METAL!
Cemetery of Scream - polish doom brigade. The titles of their two famous albums speak for themselves: "Deepression" and "Melancholy". The atmosphere of despair and awfulness is incarnated in their songs, but they are not similar to others, they have their own ways to lay it on thick. (thanks to Konstantin Victorov for the link)
Dimmu Borgir - cult sympho-black band, torn now to pieces like The Kovenant or Carpe Tenumbrum, and seem to be without future. In their time they gave out very melodic and beautiful black, like such pieces of master as "Stormblast" and "Enthrone Darkness Triumphant" 
Silentium - a young finnish band, issuing by newly  formed division of Spikefarm - Spinefarm, presented out of hand to all connoisseurs of gothic-doom a wonderful melancholic album "Infinita Plango Vulnera". Dedication to 'those living with autumn in their hearts' irrefragably adumbrates their songs' mood 
Lacrimosa - the most popular gothic band for today. Tilo Wolf's project has its own army of admirers and imitators in native Deutschland and even abroad. However this doesn't speak much. 'Sniveller' should be heared, and not only pompous-sentimental disc "Elodia", recorded with the assistance of London Symphonic Orchestra, but also early albums "Angst", "Stille", "Inferno" not less wonderful... Of course, Tilo is not a genious and his taste often lets him down, but Lacrimosa is valuable for me first of all because of it's exclusive marginality and farcical perfomance (Jan, 2001)
Jeff Buckley - pop-rock musician. Katatonia made a cover-version of his song "Nightmares By The Sea" from the double CD "Sketches". A difference from the original is negligible, just a little bit more despair in Renkse's vocal. Unfortunately Jeff Buckley is no longer with us, he deigned to drown at 29th May of 1997.

Black metal classics:

Pelle Yngve Ohlin, Mayhem vocalist. Shot himself in 1991.
Why