Saturnus
Martyre

THE REVIEW

Rarely have I found myself enjoying a band so much that I can't help but listen to any of their albums at least once a week. Especially in the doom metal field, where (unfortunately) a certain lack of quality and originality is starting to be felt, there is a band never too well-known and loved by the majority that, with every note, every guitar riff, makes my heart bleed and moves my mind toward thoughts of the sweetest sadness. This is the case with Saturnus, who, at least as far as I'm concerned, first with "Veronica Decides To Die", then with the present "Martyre" (preceding it), succeeded in shaping what I consider to be one of the most elegant, somber, majestic yet easily digestible dooms composed so far.

The six strings weave textures now raw, heavy and mortifying like cilices on bare shoulders, now aching but sweet and gentle threads that, like invisible hands, embrace and cradle you. An all-too-excellent singer acts as a ferryman through these desolate lands, a bold bard of unfulfilled desires, passions long consigned to oblivion, and romantically (literarily and artistically speaking) declarations by the light of a faint moon, on lawns wetted by a low fog bordered by a sinuous river with a slow flow.

Exceptional lyricism is exalted in tracks like "Inflame Thy Heart", a voluntary exposure to pain and conscious torture, reaching one of its peaks with the beautiful "Noir", blessed once again by a fearsome harmony among all the instruments and once again guided by Thomas' clean voice, subdued and lacerating, a prayer aimed at overcoming a latent pain never gone, a sadness dictated by the ghost of a person who once held your hand, and who has now decided to follow a different path, far away from you.

The guitar work in "Softly On The Path You Fade" is moving, heartbreaking and annihilating, a piece echoed by counterpoint by the proud and majestic "A Poem" and "Lost My Way", paths drawn on a land of melancholy and sadness, to which one seeks a cure in resentful and turbid anger, albeit reasoned, screamed in deep and feral growl by the singer.

"Thus My Heart Weepeth For Thee" is poetry within poetry, a worthy close to an excellent work, a mid-nineteenth century painting long veiled but whose crystalline class deserves attention and tribute. I believe every listener is able to identify at least one track on the record that they can adopt and feel as their own: all the tracks would be worth mentioning for any reason, such is the beauty of the album in question.

Honor to Saturnus then, musicians of great ability with an enormous merit, that of having once again given doom that literary-philosophical-artistic spirit it had at the beginning and which, over time, has been somewhat lost. An album, "Martyre", which I comfortably place on the same level as "Veronica Decides To Die", both intense, refined and shocking like a small thing that, with each awakening, gives you the strength to pour all your energies into what you believe in.