(written by Islander)
The Irish blackened doom band Soothsayer released their debut album Echoes of the Earth in 2021. In the context of premiering a song from it, we described the music as “harrowing in the extreme, and also transportive”, the kind of experience that “makes such a transfixing and mind-bending impact that it’s very hard to forget, no matter how unreal and disturbing it can become”.
Soothsayer didn’t hurry in creating their next album, but we would have been surprised if they had. The first album was so carefully crafted and so accomplished in its rendering of changing visions that any follow-up was likely to involve unhurried effort if it was to successfully build upon the debut’s formidable foundations.
But now their second album, The Unbinding, has at last been released (just 10 days ago) by Soothsayer’s new label Apocalyptic Witchcraft Recordings. It includes five songs of substantial length and tremendous emotional force. To help draw deserved attention to it, today we’re premiering a video for the song “Sooner Acceptance“.
We’ve already written about both this song and the one that immediately precedes it, the album’s opening track “Eroding the Sky“. Together they create a tremendously powerful display of Soothsayer’s ranging talents, and the next three songs are equally tremendous.
Here is how the band describe “Sooner Acceptance“:
“‘Sooner Acceptance‘ details feelings of grief and loss through a series of strenuous trials and tribulations. Though we may have to endure a torturous pilgrimage through the murky and unforgiving depths of life, there is no guarantee of a peaceful end. Despite this, we must venture forward with good faith and strong intention. This is about the journey and the suffering that accompanies it.”
To crib from what we wrote before, the song unfurls an amalgam of gently throbbing and mysteriously glinting notes, melancholy in their mood, paired with gritty sung vocals that sound haunted and tormented — and the music begins to sound tormented too, and desolate.
Gradually the music swells and wails as iron-shod beats start slugging. Gradually, the music becomes much more apocalyptic, heaving and stomping its way forward like some gigantic black-pelted beast, and the vocals descend into frightening roars and elevate into explosive screams and wild wails.
The guitars viciously slash and poisonously sizzle; the drums begin kicking up a storm, and eventually they bolt into blast-beat furies and d-beat gallops as the riffing frantically slithers, desperately sears, and wildly spins. When the notes dismally ring again near the end, it’s as if they’re announcing the most frightening phase of the song — and the final moments are exactly that.
The song demands repeated attention because of all the elaborate instrumental changes (and mood changes) that Soothsayer pack into it, though to be clear, the riffing also creates lots of insidious hooks and the rhythm-section will get your muscles moving. Moreover, Liam Hughes’ vocals are the most possessed, the most explosively crazed, the most larynx-threatening this writer has heard in a long time.
The video is a gripping thing to see too. It combines film of the Irish land, of waves washing craggy, cave-pocked shorelines; of spilling waterfalls; and of desolate ruins. It also includes dramatic footage of Soothsayer throwing themselves into a live performance of the song on stage.
SOOTHSAYER Line-up:
Liam Hughes – Vocals
Marc O’Grady – Guitars
Gerard O’ Callaghan – Drums
Con Doyle – Guitars
Pavol Rosa – Bass
The Unbinding is available from Apocalyptic Witchcraft on limited-edition vinyl, digipak CD, cassette tape, and digital formats. They recommend it for fans of: Primordial, My Dying Bride, Negura Bunget, and Cnoc An Tursa.
ORDER:
https://apocalypticwitchcraft.co.uk/
https://apocalypticwitchcraft.bandcamp.com/album/the-unbinding
SOOTHSAYER:
https://www.facebook.com/soothsayerdoom