Review by Ben for Samael - Passage (1996)
An immensely brave album that forged a new path while still impressing most of their fan base.
Samael certainly shocked their fans with Passage. Beginning their existence as an extremely raw and simple black metal band (as can be heard on debut Worship Him and follow-up Blood Ritual), this Swiss band had already evolved into a more intense and hard-hitting blasphemous outfit on 1994’s Ceremony of Opposites. They’d gained a lot of new fans with that release (myself included), all of which were waiting anxiously to see where this evolution would go next. 1995’s stop gap EP Rebellion should have warned us all of what might be coming with its increased use of keyboard atmospherics, not to mention an Alice Cooper cover, but this resulting full length album was still an immensely brave release. The industrial elements that had been hinted at on previous releases had been amplified dramatically, the keyboards given far greater importance, and the whole thing was seemingly designed for a mainstream audience. Surely none of these changes were going to please black metal fans!
Yet somehow, despite this huge shift in tone and sound, Passage is blatantly Samael! The heavy, simple, yet effective riffs are there, the energy the band had found on Ceremony of Opposites is if anything amped up and Vorph’s vocals still contain that accented venom we all know and love. This is most definitely the same Samael engine used to create their early albums, but the chassis it runs in is a completely upgraded, shiny new model. Samael made the correct judgement that their previous Satanic themes wouldn’t sit too well with the shift in approach and took on a more Occult / Cosmological subject matter, which is perfectly synchronized with the striking yet simple artwork that adorns the cover. The symphonic aspect is wonderfully executed, with tracks such as Liquid Soul Dimension and Moonskin driven by gripping, and in the latter’s case, beautiful keyboard work. While the focus was certainly taken away from the guitars, it’s worth noting that the band added a second guitarist for the recording, which gives the album a far bigger sound all up.
Not everything the band attempted on this album turned to gold. The programmed drums are great in general, giving the album an almost mechanical and powerful quality, but they occasionally make things a bit too sterile. The beginning of Angel’s Decay is an example of where they sound too characterless, perhaps even too clean for my liking. But 90% of the time they achieve their goal perfectly, with The Ones Who Came Before’s double bass kicking combination with dance beats displaying possibilities conventional drumming could never accomplish. Passage is an example of a band that was willing to take a risk, breaking down the restrictive boundaries that black metal fans often place on their beloved genre, and coming up with something that not only brought them a new audience, but was good enough to impress their existing fan base. If you’re into black metal, industrial metal or even gothic metal, there’s a lot to enjoy here. Highlight tracks are Rain, My Savior, The Ones Who Came Before and Moonskin.