It took a while since I last (enthusiastically) wrote about my country mates SaturninE, outstanding all-female blackened sludge-doom metal band from Italy. It was 2012, not long after the first line up had released their crushing self-titled debut EP, the very debut which has been the engine behind the well-deserved world-wide success of this cool group of musicians and the involvement of the band in the roster of the US label Razorback Records. For those who, incredibly, missed them sofar, SaturninE play a personal blend of slow- to mid-paced traditional, dark atmospheric and sludgy doom “poisoned” by harsh deep growling vocals and by surges of blackened, crusty metal fury. A cauldron brewing Sleep, Saint Vitus, Eyehategod, Derkéta, Gallhammer, Celtic Frost/Hellhammer, Bathory, etc. …
I had the opportunity and privilege of meeting and seeing these cool ladies playing live often, and every time it was a pleasure to interact with such extremely friendly people and, once them being on stage, get my gutters shaken by the vibrations of the bass chords or else by the singer’s deep roars. But this is what many people who saw SaturninE playing live across Europe experienced during the past three years. Three years when everything happened: success for the band, periodical touring within and outside Italy, and, yet, internal earthquakes deeply reworking the original line-up of the band.After the debut, the group lost at first one of the guitarists and then Laura, the impressive vocalist, who now militates in the devastating grind/crust punk band Stasis.
Instead of disrupting, a renewed SaturninE line-up saw the persistence of the tight “hard core” with Jex on bass, Angelica on drums and Giulia on guitars, and two highly valuable additions: guitarist Samantha (from the death metal band Undead Creep) and the impressive singer Katrien (previously in the Belgian death-crustcore band Last Legion Alive). Moreover during 2013 Jex also entered Children of Technology, the Band-of-the-Week-blazoned speed metal/punk beast which released their kickass second full-length album several months ago. Some turbulent, busy years with band members basically spread all over Italy and beyond …Yet the “entity” SaturninE kept on working tight, kept on playing live and kept on writing their music till the completion of what many of us were waiting for, a follow-up, their debut full-length album, Mors Vocat.
The album was basically done sometimes during late spring last year but some issues, probably regarding the edition of the vinyl version, must have delayed the release. But now it’s almost time: be ready for getting your early 2015 darkened by SaturninE and their Mors Vocat! The CD version is coming out now now via Razorback Records while the vinyl version will be out soon via the Italian underground label Terror from Hell /Elektroplasma Musik. This will happen well before the start of the new European tour of these Doom Ladies with none less than the almighty Abysmal Grief. By the way, those of you who will be attending the (sadly) last edition of the Heavy Days in Doom Town festival in Copenhagen will have a chance of seeing both bands there! Such long introduction dealing with what you may call metal “gossip” and not strictly with music is not for the sake of it but for concluding that, in spite of what happened in the meantime, SaturninE kept faith to their style, and keep on being the amazing band that grab the doomy heart of many extreme metal lovers before.
Now let’s deal with music …
SaturninE interpreted some of the new tracks during some live exhibitions last year. You can find some tracks posted on Youtube too. But the experience of the whole album is something else, of course. The new album evokes quite bleak, occult atmospheres and has a configuration more or less similar to the substantial debut demo. I experienced the same entrainment into a perversely seducing, funereal fairy tale with a start and an end and with a marked, let’s say, female touch. The Latin title of the new album is Mors Vocat, i.e. Death is calling. Well, you are pulled into and out of the darkness by a stream of soft, luring and eerie female whispers and shrieking. Those whispers reminded me about the Parcae weavers, the three mythological female personifications of fate and absolute controllers of the thread of life and death even above gods. What follows is a sequence of gloomy, corpulent doom metal pieces where, however, SaturninE relied on introspection and on power of seduction beside or more than on sheer aggression. The ballads are made of a solid, straightforward, infectious doom backbone over which our dark ladies SaturninE carefully and laboriously weave their intricate, malevolent thread.
The plodding leading sabbathian rhythms may deviate into a sober, funeral doom march over which guitars often interact as grievous moans of funeral wailers. Additional dark ambience and intimacy sometimes stem from a careful blend of noise and short but effective glimpses of silence where few vibrations of the bass may propagate through almost empty, pitch black space (e.g. in Fangs in the Flesh and in the opening track). But SaturninE means also streams of fury and devastating pain conveyed by Katrien’s powerful, cavernous howls and growls. Katrien’s strained vocals are halfway between otherworldly and bestial, the voice of a lethal witch so much, and so obviously, unexpected if considering the singer’s delicate beauty. But this is a feature typical of SaturninE, young attractive women who are tough like tigers, and duly proud of being both. Going back to the singing style, Katrien’s roars are typically atonal but while following the doomy rhythmic flow, they somehow turn into a ritual, occult lullaby: the witche’s voice either spouting her infernal formulas or else lulling you with a dark tale. All this adds some haunting, mind-warping psychedelic effects to the whole.
As in the debut demo, our nasty ladies liked to stir up their new doomy ballads with the insertion of faster, aggressive cavalcades ranging from crusty black death to pure epic heavy metal. The result of such blending is a propeller of tragic heaviness, high tension and a sense of imminent disaster, especially when the shifting between the fury of tribal drums and guitars and the funerary march is frenetic. For example, try Moloch. Tracks like Crimson Sand, Fangs in the Flesh, Bones and Regrets, and, especially, Empire of Guilt may be dominated by a pachidermic, martial doom background often drifting even towards extreme funeral doom (like in Funeral Moth or Horse Latitudes). But shards of pure heavy metal or even bluesy groove struggle to emerge and sputter their sparks of bright light from the smokey viscous doom vortex. Until the deadly whispers will bring everythig to a silent end …
Well, I’m sure someone else will have different “visions” while exploring and enjoying SaturninE’s new tunes! With its almost 40 minutes, the new album is not that much longer than the debut demo (which was really a big chunk of doom). However our witches seem to have “taken their time” in developing their funeral tale. I found the new album somehow more “sober” and more mournful than the debut, but never loosing in wealth of sounds and shades deriving from the multifaceted personal musical experience and taste of every member of this band. In conclusion, I found album Mors Vocat elegant and molasse-heavy, intimate and harsh, and graced by a thick, warm production. So I can’t wait for listening to it properly from the wax!
One more thing: don’t miss these doom banshees on stage!
Words: Marilena Moroni
SaturninE @ Facebook
SaturninE @ Bandcamp
Razorback Recordings
Terror from Hell /Elektroplasma Musik
Tracklist:
Mors Vocat (3:34)
Moloch (6:00)
Fangs in the Flesh (4:24)
Crimson Sand (5:16)
Empire of Guilt (7:02)
Bones and Regrets (5:17)
Escape from Reality (6:04)