Solefald – Pills Against the Ageless Ills – Review

Solefald

Pills Against the Ageless Ills (Century Media)
by Martin Popoff

Three varied albums now for this creatively exploded Norwegian duo, Solefald back with an album less phreaked than Neonism, slicker, classier, more majestically modern black. Sort of a cross between Satyricon, Sigh, and commercial Strapping, the idea here is healthy, fecund musical madness, but the locked discipline of the thing pushes it high-minded and academic. The base is progressive black metal, but there’s an English eccentricity to it, especially in the Peter Hammill-ish/Vintersorg-ian vocals.

Arrangements simply and authoritatively tower, and dark majestic melodies, which often verge on Goth, weave through every track with a sense of unease. The album is some sort of sick conceptual piece about two brothers, one a pornographer, one a philosopher, but hey, I’ve got stacks of books to read, so I doubt I’ll ever get around to either intensifying or dampening my pleasure of this formidably elaborate album through dissecting its literary depravity.
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