One of the most difficult things to a reviewer is to translate into words the music he/she listens. The thing is that words are not able to explain all the sounds one listens. As emotions, sounds are such things that most times they cannot be explained, maybe because they are pure emotion. The more I hear Metal music, the more amazed I get with the peculiar way it showcases all human emotions. There is no simple explanation to it. Here with Signeri and their debut self-tittled album “Signeri,” – of course duh – it lacked me the right words to walk my child of the night into the fantastic world they deliver here.
The more I hear bands with the label Dark Metal, the more I think it is a kind of umbrella for many musical views. It embraces tightly Doom Metal, Gothic Metal, some Black Metal, and many other Metal trends. In general, what links all of them is the dark features contained in the lyrics or about the bands iconography. Musicwise, on the other hand, the label is particularly wide with a broader reach musically speaking as it accepts from Rock grips to Metal music approaches.
All right, then. Here we have the debut self-tittled album of Signeri, a band that explores a lot this broad features of what is called Dark Metal. “Signeri” dives deep into the darkness of human soul with a musical wrapping that can be said to be interesting as the band explores many facetes of Metal music adding some others as Prog Rock features. As an album, “Signeri” is very diverse with different moods having only the sore eeirie vocals of Michael Brander to connect them.
“Darkness Embrace“ opens up the album with an uptempo cadence that I would never expect from a Dark Metal band. As I said before, the label Dark Metal accepts lots of variances into music. The happy and intense keyboards that opens the track are here just to prove my point. The unexpected is always here with us, and that amazes me a lot. Memories are always triggered while listening to albums as this one. To some extent, the guitars in the album reminds me of Desolation Angels; they are pretty simple, but their effect is grand. Simple is always better. From where I am standing, it is “Setting Fire to Worthless“ that makes justice to the label Dark Metal with its shoegazed slow cadence and blurred guitars. Interestingly, it is the track with the most Doom Metal features. Proving my point of a diverse musical orientation, “Häxa” commences with a Psychedelic Rock drive that could be the intro of any Janis Joplin song. The track takes a huge shift when vocals take the lead to get darker delivering the grand mood as the trompets and the female choir tell the fan. Grand finale “Hills Painted Red” has something of Alice Cooper in it with an instrumental wrapping of post-Metal full of strummings and clean guitars.
The best thing of “Signeri” is that it goes from the expected labeling we are used to read and listen. It is an album that breaks the consolidated conventions about a musical genre. We will be looking forward to their sophomore album.
Signeri “Signeri” on June 13th via ViciSolum Productions.
Track Listing:
- Darkness Embrace
- Legion Strong
- Setting Fire to Worthless
- Häxa
- Shedding Skin
- Nightfire
- The Sulphur Brigade (of the Morning Star)
- Hills Painted Red
Watch “Setting Fire to Worthless” official music video here.
I’m just a lucky guy who has chosen metal to live with for a long time. Metal changed my life for good. It made me more confident and stronger. Metalheads are naturally far away from the mass mediocrity and don’t accept impostures from anybody else. Metal is more than music, it’s a life changing oportunity!