Style: dungeon synth, black metal...?
Primary Emotions/Themes: look unto the stars, these songs celebrate their beauty and grandeur
Thoughts: It's amazing when you get to hear things for the first time. I completely missed Solanum when they debut in the late 90's, so now I have the distinct pleasure of discovering them 20+ years in the future.
To say that this demo rough may be a bit of an understatement. There are four songs and the band is clearly trying out a bunch of different style to see what works and what doesn't. When the band is doing dungeon synth and adjacent music they are completely in their element, seemingly nothing can stop them. When they try to incorporate some black metal though... that's where things take a slight misstep.
It's not that the black metal is bad per see... it just sounds lost. It doesn't know if it wants to be dungeon synth or if it wants to be black metal. The band needed to commit more to one or the other, but in treading the middle ground they seem to be treading water. Fortunately it's only one track where this happens, but when there's only four tracks on the album its a major portion.
Regardless of the quality of one of the tracks, Spectral Poetry is a real treat to listen to. It's dungeon synth before dungeon synth. It's trying to figure out what it is, and I love it's quirky, experimental self discovery.
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