Devil Sold His Soul
Empire Of Light

From the frosted glass window, the view was certainly not the best. The sky was gray, shrouded in a strange dark canopy, and he didn't quite know what it was, whether smog or clouds loaded with a dirty rain terribly reluctant to fall. Below, the streets were teeming with people rushing around, dodging cars that lined up and set off again, racing swiftly like luminous arrows and vanishing once they turned the corner. The confusion was such that he couldn't even hear the chirping of that (poor) pair of robins that had nested among the bony branches of the tree in front.

The flower swayed its petals, retreating (as much as it could, given the small size of the pot in which it was planted) from the glass, and lowering its golden yellow corolla fixed its gaze on a stain on the windowsill, and as often happens when we lose ourselves in our thoughts and fall as if hypnotized, we focus on real images that gradually lose their shape and leave room for memories. It can almost feel the sun warming its petals and leaves when all around it had only green fields and velvety hills that faded into the horizon, it can see one of its petals detach, as if taken by the hand of a light late summer breeze, dancing cradled by the wind and moving away following invisible patterns. The petal floats, the wind pushing it from flower to flower, and each corolla it touches, a new petal joins its lively race among the hills. Here there is no hand of man, here there is only nature, throbbing and quivering with the sun and the wind, with its simple, calm, and relaxed life.

The procession of petals reaches, dancing, a valley where fields of wheat ready for harvest languidly repose in the moonlight, illuminated by the faint lights of fireflies. The petals have fun, circling the haystacks in a harmonious round dance that also involves the fireflies, playing hide and seek among the rustling ears of wheat that seem to laugh and suffer ticklishly.

They move away from the clearing: the sun is about to rise, and its first rays reflect on the mechanical arms of the wind turbines that tower, like metal cypresses, from the surrounding hills. From each of them, electric cables depart: the wind drives the little petals around these metal veins, in a vertiginous up and down that, however, suddenly stops at the sight of enormous black iron pylons that, in the valley, dot the surrounding fields and replace flowers and trees. Around these structures, everything is dry, everything is arid: even the wind seems to be afraid to push the fragile petals, which indeed slow down their crazy race, looking around as if lost. Where is the grass, where are the trees, and why does the sun struggle to emerge from that thick cloud cover?

The beauty of these petals is that they don't give up: courageously they face the jungle of iron and cement that surrounds them, gradually gaining strength, and with a vigor that only nature can unleash, they knock down, one by one, the horrible pylons surrounding them, and wet the surrounding gray buildings with the few drops of morning dew they still retain, which become intoxicated with light and seem to rise from their ashes. The wind too picks up speed again, and makes them dance among the open windows, swings swing, and slides regain their shine and life... Then they rise up, high towards the sun that has finally won its battle against the clouds, and disperse, exhausted, into the now clear and serene sky.

Remembering all this and seeing these images again as if they were clear and sharp, the flower smiles sweetly, and as one of its now few leaves detaches, depositing itself on the cold windowsill, a ray of light filters through the gray glass and, for a moment, warms it and makes it tremble with joy.

On their sixth attempt, the English band Devil Sold His Soul hit the jackpot. Not that they went light before, mind you: the previous "Blessed & Cursed" had already highlighted their potential, but it was still a bit unripe in some places (especially in the last tracks), a bit verbose, and generally a bit derivative. Isis, Pelican, and other bands generally linked to a certain "emotional" post-metal often hovered in the tracks of that otherwise very good album. But in Our new "Empire Of Light" they seem to have shifted gears, they seem to have managed to perfectly incorporate their many influences and render them in a personal key. They have always had the ability to move emotionally, and in this work, they go all out, dragging the listener into intense and hypnotic ups and downs, as much children of Isis as of various Hands or, better yet, of A Hope For Home (with whom I feel many correlations in the atmosphere, although these tend more towards post shores, be they post-metal or post-rock, while the English seem to want to include parts bordering on emocore).

For an autumn approaching, made of both mild sunny days of late summer and cold early winter mornings, there's nothing better than this "Empire Of Light."