PATRIARCK

PATRIARKH is the new incarnation of Batushka, which changed its name and 5 years after the release of the
controversial "Hospodi", returns with a new concept album ,"Prophet Ilja".
The band's latest album is a true story that happened in Podlasie (the area where the band comes from), specifically in
the village of Grzybowszczyzna, in the 1930s and 1940s. The album takes the listener into the world of Eliasz
Klimowicz, the titular Prophet Ilja, an illiterate peasant who was the leader of the Orthodox Grzybowska Sect, active
until the 1960s, cultivating and transmitting the history of the self-proclaimed prophet.
The album contains 8 completely new compositions. To tell this interesting story, the band uses an arsenal of folk
instruments such as: tagelharpa, mandolin, mandocello, hurdy gurdy and stringed dulcimer, but also a symphony
orchestra, female vocals and male choirs. As before in Batushka's music, so in PATRIARKH`S music, Orthodox
sacredness is mixed with black and doom metal, but now it is largely enriched with folk music, neodarkfolk, or even
film music in parts where the orchestra takes the dominant role. The band uses the entire palette of Orthodox music,
venturing into the areas of Byzantine monody, liturgical chant and Russian polyphony, neatly adapting folk and
liturgical melodies to their own style.