Sol Invictus
The Cruellest Month

“The Cruellest Month” is finally in our hands: a record release that, from the cover alone, takes on the contours of an Event.

Six years of waiting, release postponed multiple times, a beautifully depicted cover by Tor Lundvall recalling the good old days: Sol Invictus are back, even though the fans of Tony Wakeford have had more than one occasion over these years, among solo albums and side projects, to satisfy their taste.

Sol Invictus are back, to the joy of many, although many will rightly think, after the long-awaited listen: “The same old warmed-up soup.” Yes, a warmed-up soup, but warmed by the only chef capable of making it still appetizing: the latest work of Sol Invictus will not disappoint fans, but certainly won't create new ones, since we find no traumatic change to disfigure the sound tested and perfected in almost twenty-five years of career.

Sol Invictus, however, are no longer that miraculously harmonious orchestra that released masterpieces like “The Blade” and “In a Garden Green”; even “The Devil's Steed,” despite a reshuffled lineup, was a compact album, brilliant in songwriting and formally impeccable: a work that shone more for its sense of unity than for individual episodes. This 2011 work, perhaps a bit more ramshackle than its predecessor, nonetheless lives on authentic throbs: the music of Sol Invictus is no longer a poetic flight in the twilight skies of a world ablaze by the Apocalypse, the air breathed is something more earthly, real, substantial, the rancid smell of wet earth can be felt, one gets lost in the dense fog that envelops the rugged open spaces where mighty armies assemble, and entranced commanders harangue their men, preparing them for the bloodiest of battles.

The typical apocalyptic folk of Sol Invictus is increasingly rooted in the popular English folk tradition, and this is undoubtedly influenced by the contribution of a medievalist like Andrew King, a true pillar of the new course of Sol Invictus: already a collaborator in “Into the Woods” (the 2007 solo album) and co-protagonist in the project The Triple Tree, King injects vigor and new vitality into the art of the plump English minstrel, who steps down from his “throne” of disenchanted observer to take up arms and stain himself with blood.

Like Moynihan in the latest Blood Axis album (the unmissable “Born Again”), Wakeford heroically stands “straight among the ruins”, among the decay of a world in a state of advanced cultural and moral putrefaction, as a holder of Tradition, heritage to be protected and preserved beyond the decay of the present. “The Cruellest Month” thus recovers the most epic, caustic, and combative vein of Sol Invictus, without losing that sense of “imminent defeat” that precedes the bloodiest fight: that desperation given by the need to fight despite the adversity of overwhelming forces.

The first part of the album sounds overall like a typical Sol Invictus album with its ups and downs, capable of exciting and sowing doubts, partly due to the looming sense of déjà-vu, partly due to the inability to keep the tension always high and make the most of every single intuition, partly due to that impression of neglect (especially in arrangements) that has plagued more than one of Wakeford's works.

“To Kill All Kings” certainly stands out with its alternation of terrifying choirs and Wakeford's voice, embittered by age: as will often happen later, the song, shaken by robust percussion, knows how to do without the song format, building up in an irresistible crescendo as other instruments join in: “To Kill All Kings” is a true anthem, it is the “We are the Dead Men” of the new decade and undoubtedly constitutes the ideal form for the return of Sol Invictus.

The subdued evocations of Andrew King (“The Sailor's Aria”, the reinterpretation of the traditional “Edward”) follow, with the more typical visions of Wakeford, of which the sprawling “Fools Ship”, the conceptual cornerstone of the work (“Books and bodies burn to prove we never learn”, emblematic verses that underscore Wakeford's cynical and pessimistic view of history and humanity) is the best representative. Not even that touch of heterogeneity is lost that had characterized Wakeford's latest works (the gypsy moods of “Toys”, the markedly seventies scents of “The Bad Luck Bird” recalling Ian Anderson's Jethro Tull, revealing Wakeford's passion, never hidden, for that progressive rock with strong folk connotations that over time has found greater space in his music).

However, it is in the final portion of the album, animated by a rough and exasperating martial spirit, that any doubts about the band's health are literally swept away. “Cruel Lincoln” (another traditional) is a kind of medieval “The End” extended for eight minutes in which King's hallucinatory growl drags us centuries back, on a journey into the wildest past we can imagine, among loudly sung choirs and arcane battle hymns that grow together with the roaring percussion and the screeching violins.

In “Somethings' Coming”, a tense, epic, dramatic folk ballad, Wakeford evidently likes to win easily, but how can one remain impassive in front of the representation of what Our man does best? The title track, in its monumentality, carries a vague sense of novelty: divided into three phases, yet another tragedy set to music by Wakeford starts contemplative, for voice and flute alone; after the bucolic introduction, the body of the song explodes in the clangor of percussion and the repetition of the formidable choirs; another pause again, and then the tragic final reprise: the perfect prelude for the last (sublime) assault, namely the concluding “The Blackleg Miner”, just three minutes and twenty-four seconds to make us understand what Wakeford is made of! The track begins like a thousand others by Sol Invictus, but halfway through it suddenly changes pace, transforming into a frantic apocalyptic escape among scraping arpeggios, twisted violins, cymbals slapped mercilessly and Wakeford's firm voice to chant the final verses of this long-awaited return: an album that, accounts settled, ends up sounding like one of the best produced by the genre in recent years.

Rating for the album: “Damn how badass is that badass Tony Wakeford!”