ALBUM REVIEW: Solastalgia – SŪRYA

For those who are unfamiliar with SŪRYA, the band released their first full length Apocalypse A.D. in 2015, focusing on experimental doom sounds and hard topics of conversation. In the years between, SŪRYA have travelled throughout Europe laying waste with their chaotic sound and expansive vision. After well and truly cutting their teeth on the road, mustering their collective musings into one mass of songs, they’ve returned with second album Solastalgia. The title in itself is a clear indicator of the subject matter, being the literal term for the existential distress of climate change. What message will SŪRYA deliver with their doom laden atmospherics?

Beginning with the behemoth track, Anthropocene, as with the album title, it’s a brilliant name for a long journey through human dominance. As it was in the beginning of mankind, a small, toking beat instigates the movement, as droning, hopeful soundscapes spread across its humble tapping. As a broadcast voice mulls over the state of the earth, a complex weaving of sounds emerges. Everything follows the same beat continuously, but it becomes more complex and destructive, bolder and yet more melancholy, all feeding back into the larger beast. As it trickles away, another voice calls to action, that we must destroy the way we are to put forward our more positive way of life. Fenland, a much smaller moment than that which came before, is littered with birdsong and echoing chords, just as ponderous as the next quote that tallies under it.

The Purpose takes on a much more direct beginning, tremolo guitars calling out over more announcements of our short comings in nature. It’s a much bigger tune from the off, filling all spaces immediately. There’s a weight to the melody that fits perfectly into that sadness that comes with realising humanities waste and chaos. SŪRYA manage to take the doom feel and create more of an apocalyptic soundtrack for the almost apocalypse we have at hand. That’s not to say its complete noise; there are moments of pause, a time to reflect and gather an understanding before the chaos of the music, and the situation, piles up once again. This is where we finally get some vocals, screaming and lamenting the waste, as things come to a head in a full-on doom meltdown.

Saviours perks things a little with its cleaner guitar echoing once again, but the wrecked and wretched nature of what SŪRYA are writing about comes bursting out before long. There’s a lot to enjoy here, with such an experiment between the softest and hardest sides of doom, there’s an extreme breakdown that slams into the more sludge side of their ethos that’s full of complete aggression. The crackling feedback ending feels like the sonic embodiment of the exhaustion of those who might survive our troubled times.

Black Snake Prophecy darkens the finale of this album with a crackling distortion and calculated build up. By this point, the emotional impact of what SŪRYA has created, and the depths of the impact they cover in their music is palpable; in the elegiac nature of their despair and disappointment, both from a human perspective and from the removed angle of nature itself comes to full force. The naturalistic rhythms lend themselves to the grounded feel of track, the growling strings and cries of desolation, the clash of modern, industrial humanity and its humble beginnings. As the song fades out to nothing, there’s both a sense of impending loss, this all that we have might also fade. And yet, in the wake of it all, the understanding gives us a small chance to right our wrongs, and you can very much take Black Snake Prophecy as a solemn call to arms.

Very focused in its message and full of diverse tones, SŪRYA have created an album that’s significant because of the band’s communication through it. The bulk of the instrumentals carry the weight of what Solastalgia is all about, and you really feel the strain of humanity through it. Doom is perfect vessel for the melancholy realisation of mankind’s ecological failings, and the musing on it, and SŪRYA have done a solid job conveying that here.

Rating: 7/10

Solastalgia is set for release July 26th via Argonauta Records.

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