ALBUM REVIEW: Desiderium – Somnuri

The biography for New Yorkers SOMNURI describes them as unconstrained by genre; hitting play on the band’s third full-length Desiderium offers up some pretty immediate evidence of where they might place their roots. In spite of this initial overly-easy pigeonholing, the band do certainly spread their wings perhaps more than before, certainly more than many that might get lumped in with them as “sludge”. While it’s a good starting point, so is post-metal; the two are natural bedfellows after all, but there’s yet more shades of death metal, black metal and prog in the mix. 

Opener Death Is The Beginning offers a first look into the maelstrom of Desiderium, a piercing scream heralding a blast beat-driven track that cuts close to death metal, but its soaring melodic chorus has just as many tones of THE OCEAN and even OPETH at times. The two mix surprisingly well, though the melodic sections are arguably a little stronger with some great hooks. Follow-up Paramnesia reaches for the EYEHATEGOD method almost immediately, the only thing missing being the swamp-drenched misanthropy that characterises the New Orleans band. Otherwise, the crawling pace and acerbic screams are well within the wheelhouse. The shades of prog reappear far more sparingly, the band instead opting for a sludgy battering. 

That’s a theme recurrent throughout Desiderium; the band weigh their two sides against each other well, towering melody offset by barbaric sludge or monolithic post-metal grooves. The end of the aforementioned Paramnesia features the kind of slow, crawling bludgeoning more associated with glaciers, while Pale Eyes injects HIGH ON FIRE with sung choruses to make the frantic riffing all the heavier and What A Way to Go dares to ask “what if MASTODON stayed a sludge band?”. Sure, they’re not as brilliantly barbaric as the Atlantans, but that’s unfair on them; SOMNURI are still a bloody good band. 

Across its nine songs, Desiderium channels a dream guitarist/vocalist Justin Sherrell once had of living multiple lifetimes across multiple realities; arguably alluded to in part by their constant genre cross-pollination, as well as the album art with the merging figures and strange cutaways. Sonically, it’s crisp, punchy and weighty; likely what you’d expect for a band recording at Silver Cord Studios (yes, that Silver Cord, home of GOJIRA) in their hometown of New York with a production job that lets the various elements breathe and gives them their own space without sacrificing suffocating atmosphere when it needs it. 

Ultimately, much like the ending of Sherrell’s dream, it still returns to its home turf though; that of TORCHE and MASTODON worship. That does SOMNURI a disservice though; those other shades of death metal, OPETHian prog and delves into even blackened passages elevates this from merely “a sludge album” into something far more along the lines of URNE; modern metal that draws on the past and their contemporaries to make something identifiable but distinct. With Desiderium, SOMNURI have taken another step along their own creative development, the end result being an easy recommendation for fans of almost any stripe of metal. 

Rating: 7/10

Desiderium is set for release on July 21st via MNRK Heavy.

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