The Scottish project SAOR has always scored well on our best-of-the-year lists. Over the years, Andy Marshall has won many hearts with this atmospheric, folkloric black metal project and this spring he presents us with his sixth full-length, Amidst The Ruins. The man has been polishing his style somewhat, with a slick production especially on previous album Origins, making the layering of the music really shine.
Marshall continues this approach on Amidst The Ruins. Compared to material from a decade ago, the new album is a lot more harmonious, but you cannot say that the Scot has ever really worked with archaic black folk. We get only five songs, but these are clocking in for almost an hour of in-depth folklore with an instrumental refinement that you can only find with bands like Eluveitie. Yet SAOR continues to sound very different from that Swiss band of forest enthusiasts. This man’s melodic Highlander landscape continues to sound like black metal, with some characteristic guitar chords here and there that keep it somewhat traditional. However, Marshall plays with that basis by continually building up a frivolous layering and erupting volcano after volcano in an epic manner.
It is difficult to review this album track by track since each of these songs are more than ten minutes long and have their own story. The profound epic Glen of Sorrow comes across nicely as the third track in the middle, before moving on to the beautiful acoustics of The Sylvan Embrace. If the foregoing had Eluveitie as equal, then I have to make comparisons here with Agalloch‘s The Mantle. Closing is done with quite a bit of spice on Rebirth. The melodic highlights of the guitars remind me a bit of Neige’s on that track.
If you like folkloric black, then you couldn’t ask for a better gift than a new SAOR record. You know it will always be quality, but I feel like this goes even deeper than Origins. A bold assumption, but I am making it anyway. Feel free to listen to this winter landscape for an hour and then contradict me.
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