ALBUM REVIEW: Sol Cultus – Mairu
Praise the sun! No, this isn’t some new Dark Souls-themed band, but rather the translation for UK sludge metallers MAIRU’s debut album, Sol Cultus. A labour of love that started gestating before the pandemic, and finished in the post-pandemic world, Sol Cultus was a mammoth undertaking even before you come to its sprawling, eight song, hour-long runtime and gargantuan scope. Naturally, this means expectations are high, especially when the band had previously been making a name for themselves on the live circuit, having gigged with the likes of HUNDRED YEAR OLD MAN, FRONTIERER and OHHMS.
It’s a relief, then, that MAIRU more than meet those lofty expectations of them, even on a debut album, with a stunning blend of atmosphere, sheer titanic heft, post-metal dynamics and stirring emotions – and often instrumentally. Torch Bearer acts as the gateway not only to the album but to MAIRU’s whole sound, condensing much of what they do across Sol Cultus into nine minutes, from CONAN-esque bellowing doom, to the kind of foreboding, oppressive atmosphere often found on Vertikal-era CULT OF LUNA. There’s more than a whiff of funeral doom in its crawling, bludgeoning approach, and the band allow the full, suffocating weight of those passages to bear down.
Occasionally shimmering post-rock overtakes that glacial crush, such as the final minutes of Torch Bearer or the following Perihelion that unfurls majestically like COLDBONES. The minimalist guitar melody in the latter is intensely evocative, almost like a vision of the clouds opening above a tortured landscape to let the sun back in. At the centre of the album sits a re-recording of 2019 single Wild Darkened Eyes, offering long-time fans a glimpse of how the band have progressed since those early days. It’s a bold choice to put an arguably less-evolved version of the band on an album that’s until now been nothing short of stunning, but it slots alongside the other cuts with ease in its opening howls and caustic sludgy guitars.
Sol Cultus is a sonic odyssey; The Scattering Dust is intense and dramatic sludge, while Atar brings industrial elements into its bruising fury; all this from the comparatively simple opening moments of Torch Bearer, which also swiftly becomes anything but. By casting everything against a backdrop of atmospheric post-metal, MAIRU ensure there’s a backbone to the album that carries throughout and holds up even during the moments furthest away from the crush, such as Perihelion’s soaring post-rock crescendos. It all culminates with the ten-minute epic Rite Of Embers, bringing an end to the sonic journey of the past hour in a way that exemplifies the route taken along the way with swells of post-rock, deluges of drum fills underpinning vitriolic sludge and atmospheric passages that buck and heave.
For this to be MAIRU’s debut album makes Sol Cultus even more of a jaw-dropping accomplishment. They sound far wiser than their years, with a deep understanding of dynamics and progression within their songs and they successfully weave emotion throughout, treating the occasional vocal passages as an instrument to further this aim rather than a focus themselves. Essential for any fans of cathartic, cerebral post-metal.
Rating: 8/10
Sol Cultus is set for release on July 28th via Trepanation Recordings.
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