review by: The Condor

Not sure what it is that turned Solefald from their grim blackness into a goofy electronic/metal hybrid, then into a super technical genre hopping "modern" black metal band, and finally into a melancholic dark metal prog band. But whatever it is, I love it.

Very few bands have been so interesting to watch and remained so totally unpredictable. While this unpredictability has not always served them well (the musical mis-step that was the sort of appalling Neonism), it has managed to keep them sonically original and served to alienate their core fan base with every new release. And c'mon, you gotta love a band with that sort of single mindedness.

This time around their overt weirdness is blunted a bit and it serves them well. The songs are still weird, but subtlely, in structure and melody, rather than the brick-in-the-face, over the top weirdness of their past efforts. The sound here is melancholic and mournful, with lots of acoustic guitars and piano, chantlike clean vocals and really catchy hooks. The first band I thought of when I threw this on was definitely Katatonia.

Midtempo minor key epics with gorgeously sorrowful melodies and amazing production. The occasional circusy/ prog rock keyboards or Gerry Rafferty (remember “Baker Street”?) saxophones won't let you forget that you're still listening to Solefald, and the once-in-a-while bursts of furious blast beats and growled guttural vocals help remind us that the band we're listening to was actually once a real black metal band. Not their best record by a long shot (that would be the amazing and fucked up Pills Against the Ancient Ills - review here) nor the heaviest (that would be their debut, The Linear Scaffold) just a gorgeous chunk of sad heaviness, and the next perfectly illogical step in Solefald's musical evolution. (8/10)