August 2020 Feature Release - The Infinite Edition
It's now August which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on these releases.
This month's feature release for The Infinite is 2011's highly regarded "Svartir Sandar" album from Icelandic post-metal outfit Sólstafir. It saw the band continuing their strong run of form, following on as it did from 2009's "Köld" album which we featured earlier in the year. Opinions are often divided as to which of these releases marks Sólstafir's finest metal release & we're keen to get your buy-in on which of these impressive records gets your vote.
https://metal.academy/releases/3846
The more I listen to Sólstafir, the more I'm realizing just how hit or miss Post-Metal really is for me. My thoughts from Köld haven't necessarily changed, since I still really love their style but can't necessarily point out exactly why. Maybe it's the warming reverb? The calming and meandering songwriting that never really goes anywhere but never exactly gets boring for me? Needless to say they've had me extremely conflicted on what to write for this entire month, so this one is going to be way more off-the-cuff than normal as I try and find some bearings on how exactly to explain anything here.
Although they share the same sort of sound style, Köld and Svartir Sandar are very, very different albums. Köld is dark, brooding, even menacing at times. This one is just as atmospheric but more riff and melody driven, with most of the tracks sounding strangely uplifting in their own Post-Metal kind of way. It's more dreamy and almost ethereal at times. The fact that Svartir Sandar is a double album is a bit much though, since it packs even less punch overall than Köld did. The percussion is reverbed to hell, with most of the cymbals sounding like a white noise radio most of the time. The riffing is good enough and the Icelandic lyrics give it a homely feel since it's the band's native language, but it certainly drags over its runtime. At the end of the day I think I prefer the darker, more dismal atmosphere of Köld over Svartir Sandar, even though this album has more content to sink your teeth into. If you're a huge Post-Metal fan, this album is probably a slice of heaven for you, and while I still love Sólstafir's overall sound, I can't give this one too high of a score. I could definitely see this album being a grower though, I think I have to give Post-Metal in general some more time to sink in compared to other genres.
3.5/5