What more crazy stuff will we see in this music? At first, this project isn’t the well-known band Batushka or Батюшка (Cyrillic for the word Father). The band from Poland made a huge impact with the debut album “Litourgiya” (2015), because they combined excellent black metal with a very different approach on live shows, with the musicians being dressed up as orthodox priests and the whole scenery reminding of a Christian mass.

What followed, was a dispute between the two main members of them as they used six more session musicians for live shows. Krzysztof Drabikowski (guitars, bass, vocals) and Bartłomiej Krysiuk (vocals) claimed they kicked the other one out of the band and each of them continue with their own…Batushka. The first released the album “Panihida” and the second the album “Hospodi”, both in 2019. It is yet unclear who has the rights to use this name.

On top of that, there are four parody bands of this situation. At least, these many I managed to find. We don’t really know from what country or with what members. One with the same name claims to be from Russia, another one who uses the Greek transliteration Μπατούσκα claims to be two orthodox monks from Mount Athos in Greece, another one decided to be named Vladyka (Cyrillic for the word Lord) while this one chose the pronunciation Batyushka and they are supposed to be orthodox priests from Russia. The first two bands have released one album each during 2019, the third one EP in the same year and this one ten (!) albums in 2019 and their eleventh now in 2020.

So, this is actually a presentation of the strange situation that followed the dispute of Batushka. There cannot be a serious review, as these are parody bands. This particular one plays something that could be characterized as atmospheric black metal with no lyrics at all and drum machine, something that makes it really irritating. Not that the other three make a better job, even if they have vocals, but this hasn’t a serious reason to exist at all. Making eleven albums with sloppiness just to mock something, shows that there is a serious problem. If you are into black metal, better listen the original band in case you haven’t so far.