Satinoxide

Still The Sun

Written by: PP on 12/01/2012 05:48:59

It's always refreshing to see a young band that has it together when it comes to self-promotion. Satinoxide, who hail from Middelburg, Holland, include a professionally written one-sheet biography about the band and an impersonal cover letter containing all the information a reviewer needs to know about their new album "Still The Sun". We're told, among other things, that the band's inspiration comes from "Tibetan meditation" and "roaring rock organs", which are all nice and flashy phrases to stick onto a review such as this one to awaken reader interest. But more than that, they present themselves on Bandcamp, Facebook, and other social/music sites in a way that's professional and makes our life easy as reviewers. You wouldn't believe some of the crap we have to go through to essentially do the bands a favor by featuring them on a high traffic webzine.

"But what does this have to do with Still The Sun?", you might ask in a puzzled manner. A good question, which deserves a one word answer: everything. The professionalism and structured approach to promotion reflects the people behind the band, which in turn means their record has some of those qualities as well. They're dealing in progressive metal, so an obsessive approach to structure and clarity is only beneficial for the band.

While you might think Opeth or Dream Theater as the first two bands whenever someone mentions that genre, Satinoxide forge a path of their own, borrowing equally much from melancholic metal and doom metal as they do from the standard prog metal repertoire. "Nectar of Desire", for instance, is clearly a prog metal song at heart, but the piano back gives it a saddened feel, whilst the slow tempo and the grunted vocals recall some of the more memorable doom metal moments. That is all before the band unleashes into a beautiful concatenation of heavy metal meets atmospheric overtones meets gothic vibes, all in a progressive rock mould. It sounds like Paradise Lost, Nahemah, and an untold number of doom metal bands put together in a room and told to write a progressive metal record.

The result is surprisingly convincing and enjoyable throughout. While "Still The Sun" might not be among the most original of releases - aside from the Tibetan chanting in a few passages - it is executed extremely well for a debut album. Considering this is a DIY release, the songs and the production are pretty much at as good as it gets before the band enters a real studio at some point. As it stands now, there's still room for improvement, but prog metal fans should already now be on the lookout for Satinoxide, who avoid stumbling into the Dream Theater/Opeth clone pit exceptionally well, and deliver a quality prog metal product in the process.

7

Download: Nectar Of Desire
For the fans of: soothing progressive metal
LIsten: Bandcamp

Release date 01.08.2011
Self-Released

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