The German symphonic black metal band Suffering Souls first sprang to dark life in the distant year 1994 under the name Dismal, but soon embraced its current name. From the beginning its founder Tobias Micko (aka Lord Esgaroth) has been at the helm, at times accompanied by other participants either in recordings or on stage.
At the end of 2019, after a quarter-century of the band’s existence, Tobias Micko started songwriting for the fifth Suffering Souls album, and it was recorded at the history-making Hertz Studio in Poland. Micko is responsible for everything on the album, other than the session drums, which were performed by Michiel Van Der Plicht (Pestilence).
Today the album is being co-released by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Fetzner Death Records (Germany). Its name is An Iconic Taste Of Demise, and we’re premiering it in full right now.
The new album is a substantial work, encompassing 10 songs and a total run-time of almost 56 minutes. The labels proclaim that these epic new anthems “create a powerful and imposing, aggressive atmosphere that has never existed before in the work of Suffering Souls“, and all those adjectives do indeed ring true when experiencing the sensations of the music. The years since the band’s last album, 2019’s In Synergy Obscene, were obviously well-spent.
The sensations of the music vary dramatically. As the songs move through their many phases they are at times sinister and haunting and at other times poignant and stricken, towering and terrorizing, grand and glorious. Suffering Souls also picks its moments to bring in viscerally convulsive riffs and hammering beats well-made for headbanging.
Through all the phases, Lord Esgaroth‘s cutting snarls and wild howls are viciously inflamed, a feral and ferocious counterpoint to the intricacy and elegance of the surrounding instrumentation. Not surprisingly, Michiel Van Der Plicht‘s drumming is consistently gripping, and materially adds to the ever-changing variety of these sonic adventures.
Symphonic metal of all genre types has a tendency to dwell in bombast and grandiosity, and, honestly, entire albums written in that way can become exhausting, a challenge to the endurance of even those listeners who relish symphonic metal. To be sure, on the new album Suffering Souls has crafted orchestral movements that will take your breath away, sweeping and soaring like astonishing tempests with ravishing power or like astonishing celestial visions. But the album isn’t a non-stop spectacle.
As already previewed, Suffering Souls leavens the experience with orchestral instrumentation, acoustic guitars, and somber piano keys that are also soft and subdued, providing dark shadows rather than racing stormclouds and lightning strikes. On the other side of the spectrum, you’ll encounter obliterating blast-beats and feverish, fret-melting riffage that sends the music to even greater heights of fire and ferocity.
In between, you’ll find music that rocks out and includes clean choral singing, as well as rippling piano keys and swirling and soaring guitar solos that seem ready for grand stages and packed arenas (for example, you’ll find all of that and more within “In the Order of Doom”), and “Under My Skin” begins like a stately waltz in a great hall. Gang yells and other types of massed vocals also make an appearance, as does Lord Esgaroth‘s impassioned solo singing, and the guitar soloing is perpetually of the kind that puts hearts in throats.
The elaborate pageantry of the music is so pronounced, so much like an infernal theatrical narrative, that it’s tempting to think of it as an epic rock opera (and even more so because of the nature of the guitar soloing), telling us an extravagant tale of immense dark forces, of glory and devastation and downfall, a tale that seems to end with the ravishing (and heart-breaking) piano-led orchestral piece “Of Clarity and Hysteria” — though it’s followed, as a bonus, by the 8-minute classical symphonic track “Cruelty In Love And Fear” (again, no vocals, and no metal instruments either), which includes an entrancing string melody with an exotically enchanting air.
There’s so much going on in the album, plotted so meticulously and executed with such care and skill, that it’s astonishing to think of it as the creation of just one person (and one very good drummer). It would still be extraordinary if a small army had been involved, but even more so because the participants were far fewer in number.
And with that, we’ll leave you to experience the full premiere stream of An Iconic Taste Of Demise.
The album features artwork by Thorsten Burger. Satanath and Fetzner Death are releasing it today on a six-panel Digipak CD edition with a 12-page booklet, as well as digitally. A vinyl edition will be forthcoming.
PRE-ORDER:
https://satanath.bandcamp.com/album/sat381-suffering-souls-an-iconic-taste-of-demise-2024
https://fetznerdeathrecords.bandcamp.com/album/suffering-souls-an-iconic-taste-of-demise
SUFFERING SOULS:
http://www.facebook.com/p/SUFFERING-SOULS-Official-100063490099366
http://www.instagram.com/suffering_souls_official