Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects
Sol Niger Within

When a short circuit occurs in the brain of an artist, there are only two possible outcomes: either madness, or a stroke of absolute and unrepeatable genius... It's useless for me to tell you which of the two domains this work belongs to, also because I would immediately change my mind. Like in a limbo where the boundaries of two extremes blend, losing their mutual identities, so in this album reason and madness have canceled each other out to give life to something different and new (as in a Hegelian overcoming of thesis and antithesis).

Even just by observing the splendid artwork, technological yet at the same time with bio-humanoid reminiscences, the observer's mind immediately runs to the image of the convolutions of the brain mass and the dense network of neurons from which it is composed. Without rhetoric, in this work there is no heart, there is no feeling (and, mind you, in this case it's not a negative consideration), but an incredible lucidity, even if it's only through the myriad of emotions and sensations it evokes in the listener that it's possible to seek its meaning... As if to say that the search for something incomprehensible is more important and vital than that "something" itself.

To speak of this work as a mere sum of tracks is not only belittling but also improper, as it was conceived as a single flow (about 40 minutes long), divided into several movements. In this regard, a small "historical" note: this work, originally released as a single track and later republished with some modifications (the "free" organ parts disappeared in favor of those with the sax) under the title "Sol Niger Within - Version 3.33", was again distributed in its first version, with the division into tracks, in my opinion only useful for "rediscovering" some passage that requires repeated listens.

"Sol Niger Within" is, first of all, a "stream of consciousness" (yes, I know, it's an overused expression, but in this case, it's perfectly illustrative of the work's magnitude), an unsettling journey of "alien" sounds and polyrhythms on the verge of the inhuman (all performed, however, by the very human Morgan Ågren, currently with Kaipa) where Meshuggah fans will feel at home, with Thomas Haake as screamer and the great Fredrik Thordendal directing everything from the heights of his magnificent 6/7/8-string guitar. The listener is constantly slammed against majestic sound architectures, interspersed with moments of icy, apparent tranquility, only to be confronted (from about halfway through the album onward) with the indecipherability of scores more akin to free jazz than metal, yet surprisingly coherent with everything else.

If you think Meshuggah's "Catch 33" is an innovative album (and in many respects, it undoubtedly is), "Sol Niger Within" goes decidedly beyond, even though it was released much earlier, blending the mother group's sounds with the most experimental avant-gardism, resulting in a maddeningly twisted, sick, yet compelling sonic turmoil in its insane and lucid awareness.

An album light-years ahead, pushing the very concept of music even further: if this is hell, it's really not bad at all.