Russian blackgaze duo Olhava dropped their new studio album »Memorial«; out now via Avantgarde Music!

Russian blackgaze duo Olhava stream their sixth full-length album, »Memorial«, which dropped on February 27th, 2026 via Avantgarde Music.

Listen to »Memorial« oa all streaming platforms!

Tracklist:
01. Ageless River X
02. After I’m Gone
03. When The Ashes Grow Cold
04. Ageless River XI
05. Memorial
06. Ageless River XII
07. The River Wakes
08. Ageless River XIII

Courtesy of Metaversus PR:

Russian blackgaze duo Olhava is back with their sixth studio album. »Memorial« continues the path opened by »Sacrifice« (2024). After the burning, there is stillness. Time spent among what remains. Ashes settle, memory lingers, and the question is no longer how to begin again, but what can finally be released.

»Memorial« moves through remembrance toward letting go and acceptance – a quiet reconciliation with what cannot be carried further. It speaks from a single, unpersonified voice: a shared human state shaped by loss, exhaustion, love, and the fragile will to endure. At its center stands a forest hut: not a physical place, but a retreat of the mind. A solitary structure in the woods, an escape from the collapsing outer world, where everything decays, familiar bonds loosen, and people drift apart and return changed. The hut becomes a memorial itself – an obelisk in the forest, a burial site for former lives, a place one returns to alone to contemplate what remains.

Inside, memory becomes both refuge and weight. What was meant to be forgotten stays. What was meant to last dissolves. Grief softens into stillness. Unlike »Sacrifice«, »Memorial« offers a different kind of rebirth. Rebirth here is indistinct – a quieter transformation found in letting go rather than becoming. Only in its final moments does movement return: a fragile renewal, like thawed water finding its way to a river.

Olhava’s »Memorial« is dedicated to more than one loss. It holds space for the dead, for love that has outlived itself, for time that cannot be returned, for friends forced to flee, and for selves left behind. Its meaning remains open, shifting with each return – a structure in the forest, unchanged, waiting.

Avantgarde Music released »Memorial« on CD, LP, and digital on February 27, 2026.

Order the album here:
avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com | olhava.bandcamp.com

Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well