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Information on Russia's CrySna is sparse to say the least. They have no web presence that I could find, no Metal-Archives entry and the organization that sent me their album Samsara, In Rock, a Russian music magazine, has a web landing page that simply redirects to other sites. What I can say, after listening to Samsara quite a few times, is they are superficially similar to Turkey's Almora in that they employ both male and female clean singing and have some decent riffs and vocal lines. The lyrics are all in Russian, so I've little idea what CrySna are singing about though they were kind enough to put English translations of the song titles embedded in the files. On the one hand, I get a bit of a Pagan feel for CrySna's music with titles like "Warrior" ("Voin") and "Footways of Evil" ("Dorozhki Zla"). The more traditional riffing is often combined with keyboards which give CrySna's music a Symphonic feel at times and a weird sort of "techno" feel at others. Songs like "Not a Toy" ("Ne Igrushka") and "Less Words" ("Menshe Slov") illustrate this weird dichotomy of traditional Heavy Metal elements with more modern, non-Metal influences and prove that there definitely remains a gap between East and West. It's just not about missiles anymore.

Samsara isn't bad though not nearly as entertaining as Almora's Shehrezad. If you dig pseudo-Symphonic Metal and are looking for something a little left of center you might want to give CrySna a listen. If you can find it.