It's twenty years since Samael first got together, something that is going to make a generation of metal fans feel very old indeed. Which means we've also had fifteen years of black metal fans decrying them as traitors since their early on-two knockout blow of "Worship Him" and "Black Ritual".
Since saying goodbye to black metal, Smael have steered a course through more conventional metal waters until "Passage" when they made a sideways shift into a more experimental direction. And now, with "Solar Soul", Matthew, tonight, Samael are going to be Rammstein.
Yup, it's pretty much full on industrial metal in Samael land these days. For sure, it's kind of a concept album, as it's presented as a soundtrack to a non-existant film about an abandoned universe (no, not Glasgow), but shear away the still BM influenced vocals, and it's pretty bog standard IM. It's very good, mind, there are some storming tracks here with 'Slavecrazy' and 'Valkyries' New Ride', the highlights round my way. Generally, it's the middle eastern influenced material that works best, on an album that will delight fans of their chosen genre.
Assuming they ever hear