Samael
Solar Soul

That Samael is a unique band is undeniable, and they deserve to be placed on a higher plane, the same, so to speak, and just to stay in Switzerland, where Celtic Frost is also found.

Inexorable in their progress, in their transformation, in drawing from external sources to fuel their own sound and desire to push ever further and to demonstrate how music (whether metallic or dark/electronic, extreme or not) can be used to express a creativity that is mutable, yet constantly focused on producing records capable of leaving, every time, a decisive musical imprint. That their minds had a predetermined plan since about twenty years ago, when they began to plague the world with primal black metal, is hard to believe; however, it's certain that their desire to experiment has taken them far from those lands, but also very high.

With "Solar Soul," the fundamental information is already given to us starting from the title, as if they wanted to indicate that the album is deeply a child of the soul, even before the intellect, and more sunny and open, if we want, warm, in opposition to the chilling and sharp sound surgery of the latest releases. But this does not detract from the fact that it is then the sound that pilots the dance and, perhaps more than ever before, change and research have produced a perfect combination with a sophistication that is not trivial, recovering, on one side, greater intensity and guitar presence, and on the other, a "pop" decadent vein that gives a clear melodic appeal to the tracks. And it is precisely this mixture, as well as the one created with the interaction between traditional instrumentation and keyboards and programming, that is best rendered in the hands of Samael.

The tracks are grand, sleek, orchestral, morbid, pounding, theatrical, cybernetic, with insinuating classical and oriental airs interspersed with scenarios of future mechanized humanity. Electro dark metal captured at its moment of maximum expressive splendor, this is "Solar Soul."