They made their debut shocking appearance with the album Worship Him and since then they evolved, in a variety of ways, their sound of the so called 'Dark' Metal. They experiment, they dare to use a lot of electronic elements and they take us one step further with their new release Solar Soul.
Worship Him was the album that made SAMAEL known to us in the early '90s, yet they continued with successful and worth mentioning releases, such as Ceremony Of Opposites in 1994 and Passage in 1996. It's been around three years since SAMAEL's last release and the Swiss decided to make a strong comeback with Solar Soul.
From the first listening, it seems that Metal takes a break in this album and leaves a lot of space to electronic stuff, rythmic disco sounds, loops, samples and synths. On one hand, concerning Vorph's vocals, there's a strange mix between aggressive growls that desperately want to convert into melodic singing, while - on the other hand - in terms of production there's been an excellent work with the programming, percussion and the furious keyboards. Standout tracks of Solar Soul are Promised Land, Slavocracy and the very clever Alliance.
I don't know where someone draws the line in tolerating the usual 'innovations' in the new era of Metal. Overall, the result is good, although it could be characterised as way too catchy and commercialised...