Review by Saxy S for Mare Cognitum - Solar Paroxysm (2021)

As I sure is prominent by my listening history as well as my reviews of atmospheric black metal in the past, I am typically drawn in towards the more nature and folk inspired stylings of a Panopticon or Saor. But I was thoroughly impressed by Mare Cognitum last year when I reviewed their Wanderers collaboration with Spectral Lore, which focused more on the spatial part of the ABM tag. So I made a concerted effort to listen to more from Mare Cognitum in the future.

And what I found was some very solid atmospheric black metal, which includes this, the newest album. Much of the time I have found that most of my extreme metal preferences have been towards the slower side, allowing for the melodies to take center stage. Mare Cognitum has some technically impressive foundations, but the melodies and grooves are still heavily prominent; a feat very seldom achieved in extreme metal.

The sound of this album is very pretty as well. Even though all of these songs start with a very distorted guitar which do not sound pleasant, the bass entrance fixes the guitar mixing and the rest of these songs can proceed splendidly. The album's obvious standout is “Luminous Accretion” in the way in which the song is able to grow (subtly), the vocals and guitar leads are balanced and the stickiness of the guitar lead is not that far removed from a Saor project.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album does not have the same infectiousness. While songs like “Antaresian” and “Frozen Star Divinization” sound massive and epic, they do tend to run on a little too long, and in the case of the former, has to fade out because even Jacob Buczarski does not know how to finish it! I would say that the album’s weakest moment is “Terra Requiem”, not because it is bad; I quite enjoyed the change of pace placed right in the middle of this record, but because the return of the blast beats and change of pace during its second half do not feel rewarding or well prepared.

So while I did enjoy this quite a bit, I would be hard pressed to call this excellent. With the exception of one great track, much of this record just runs together for me. Still, this is high quality atmospheric black metal that balances the extremity with the melodic very well.