ALBUM REIVEW: Rites – Satyrus

Since their formation back in 2016, Italy’s SATYRUS have been incredibly quiet on the recording front, opting to play live and build a solid following. SATYRUS venerate a classic doom sound, without straying into the territory of being an outright carbon copy of other, more well established acts. Their long awaited debut album, Rites, is a really good start for the band, and sees them take a brilliant musical base and begin to, tentatively, impress their own style onto it, making for a dark and atmospheric album.

Black Satyrus with its sonorous, chanted vocals, sets a dark and atmospheric tone for Rites. The main part of this track is comprised of sludgy, slightly psychedelic guitar hooks and soaring vocals, with solid drumming providing a great, hypnotic rhythm to the whole song. This is a powerful and beguiling way to kick the album off, blending the darker aspects of doom with an infectious, catchy groove, setting a lofty bar for the rest of the record to overcome. Shovel once again uses great, cinematic elements to draw the listener in, before a dense, crushing guitar starts the proceedings. It’s got a far more caustic and monstrous sound than the previous offering, with juggernaut rhythmic moments providing a great contrast for the slick lead riffs that punctuate the music. The music, overall, is much livelier and more imaginative, whilst still maintaining that morose heaviness that helped make its predecessor so impressive.

Swirl makes great use of harsher tones and monolithic motifs to craft one of the more intense offerings on the album. Huge guitar chords and thunderous drumming give this song an excellent backdrop, with some glorious vocals carving through the mix and adding a dramatic exclamation to an already dramatic and interesting piece of music. It’s a brilliant exercise in mixing great music with an equally amazing atmosphere, resulting in one of the albums stand out tracks. Stigma, with its impenetrable fuzz and tar thick bass, is another notable apex for this album, taking the music much deeper into a stoner sound than any of the tracks that came before it. There’s also some incredibly adventurous guitar playing that really carries the track at many points, and some far more experimental moments than many of the albums earlier offerings, making this a brilliant and varied track from start to finish. Trailblazer is a haunting and morose slow burner, and gradually gathers pace as it progresses. This track sees some of the best use of the bass, with meaty, overpowering hooks giving this song the focal point around which the rest of the music is built. The guitars have a lighter, more ethereal approach, and the vocals really add an epic edge to this hazy and murky piece of music. It’s an eclectic and memorable way to close a fantastic album.

Rites isn’t an album that is any any way, shape or form trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to doom metal, but this is nonetheless a great experience with a lot of strong music to offer. The use of soundbites and the slight experimentation with tone help to really elevate this album at many points, turning great, epic music into heavily atmospheric and engrossing monoliths. It’s hard to find fault with the music itself; tight, groove-laden and powerful, it brings together all the various of ingredients that go into making brilliant doom. Rites is a great debut record, and has laid some great foundations on which SATYRUS should be able to build their next few albums, proving to be a solid and impressive record from start to finish.

Rating: 8/10

Rites is out now via self release. 

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