Black Metal History Month - Saor : "Admist the Ruins"

Looks like the last time we reviewed this Scottish black metal band it was for their 2nd album. It scored an 8 making it better than most of the atmospheric black metal coming out that year, but not top 10 worthy. There is a more folk-entrenched melody in the music this time around. This feels like the most noted change from what I recall of their earlier work. The vocals are your typical mid-range black metal rasp. They occupy the obligatory space you expected them to. Some cool things are going on musically with woodwinds and synth textures. It gives a misty haunting vibe, though not a dark one. At over twelve minutes it is indeed an epically grandiose way to get things started which is what fans of this kind of black metal are looking for I suppose.

More if riding on the second song "Echoes of the Ancient Land" since this is where I am going to need to hear their ability to do something different than what they did here. There are already too many black metal bands who are one-trick ponies with all their songs sounding the same. It is also what separates a band from just being able to achieve a song to actually being songwriters. They do pivot and get more aggressive, with more double bass driving the sound than blast beats. This works for me as it keeps them from just being a Summoning tribute act. The woodwinds do return to what is almost the stock folk metal intervals. Almost all of this is being pulled off by Andy Marshall, which is impressive to some degree. He does have help with voice to chime in on the sung chorus to this song. The drumming is an impressive display from Carlos Vivas. It just becomes evident midway into this song that their songwriting still is somewhat bloated as the song things begin to drag. 

There is more atmosphere in the melancholy guitar that opens "Glen of Sorror". At least they can live up to the song's name. Though the mood brightens throughout the song into something with a triumphant brightness. The more layered roar of vocals works well. There is more of a hushed folky Agalloch feel to "The Sylvan Embrace" This makes sense given the song's title. The last song indulges in more grandiose pageantry the blast of the drums sits under everything back in the mix. The end of the song goes in an almost Enya-like direction. I'll give this album an 8.5, the songs are long-winded, but the album is well-recorded and sounds great. If bands like Summoning are your thing or you are already a fan of this project it is giving you what you want. Not dark enough for my personal tastes, there a metal heads who are into scented candles and like this sort of thing , they will be stoke. It drops on Season of Mist. 

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Saor: "Aura"

From the hills of Scotland comes some impressive atmospheric black metal. Saor's second album opens with"Children of the mist". The song kicks off the album with  haunting flute providing the back drop to a very jaggedly staccato take on folk metal. There is some frolic in what they do, off set by the low roar of the vocals. That are overdubbed in a manner that makes it sound like a drunken gang of vikings. Clean vocals chime in around the roaring. The album sweeps you away with in on the first song, only the Killswitch Engage bro metal like punches that crop up leave you to scratch your head as every thing else makes perfect sense for this kind of thing. The blast beats that fight against the big synth bath toward the end of the song, before the war drums come in sounds like it is in the distance and the whole thing has a very soundtrack like quality until they blaze back in.

The title track starts with soothing ambiance before the call to battle goes back out. The guitars seem to be in constant melody mode, in some ways this reminds me of Summoning.  The flute sound is very similar to the one employed in the first song. The title track is a little more straight forward in it's charge forward, throwing in the typical blast beat pattern mid way into the fight. There are glimpses of cool riffs, that jump at at you but the song is one massive wave of action packed melodrama, until at the 8:40 mark it breaks all the way down into faint guitar. "The Awakening" begins with the emphasis on the folk atmosphere. There is a cool tribal pound at six and a half minutes into this one.

The pacing that sets "Farewell" in motion helps distinguish it from the other songs, that all eventually dive head first into a blast beat section.Once again the flute returns to a similar place until the black metal section unfold and gives this song another stamp to set it apart from the others.They pound into some of the heavier sections with a majestic authority. The wider scope of dynamic placement in this songs arrangement, helps to allow each section to unfold to the best of it's ability rather than throwing everything at you at once. The war drums rise again on the closing song "Pillars of the Earth". The guitar sound changes to a clean strum that brings a much needed change of sonics. It crashes down into a weird lof-fi section of black metal that sounds like it was recorded in some one's basement rather than the studio the rest of the album was recorded in. It is a denser and heavier sound, but not as refined ,so much of what they do get lost in the murk. Closing in on the ten minute mark they do transition into a more graceful melodic section while the rough-hewn drumming thunders under . These guys achieve the sound they set out to accomplish at sometimes it goes slightly weird of center and the flute can be over done, but it is one of the better efforts to combine black metal with folk, so fans of Summoning take note. I'll give it an 8.