Soliloquium – Famine

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7.0

• Band:
  Soliloquium
• Duration: 00:56:38
• Available from: 11/04/2025
• Label:

• Meuse Music Records

Streaming not yet available

The duo composed of the singer/guitarist Stefan Nordström and the bassist Jonas Bergkvist arrives at the Meuse Music Records label, in these very active times, and reaches the finish line of the fifth album, with the help of the Xinês shiftist on drums to complete the training, as well as several guests who alternate above all in the voice.
“Famine”, which comes three years after the previous “soulsearching”, wants to be an intimate and personal album, through which Nordström, author of texts and music, tries to free himself from personal demons who have afflicted him in recent times, closing forever a dark period of his life, and these moods are breathing in all their fullness.
The Swedes started from purely Doom/Death Metal roots, with strong ties with bands such as Katatonia, Swallow the Sun and October Tide, and then incorporates other influences in their musical fabric, ranging from progressive to shoegaze to post-rock, and the new album is perfectly in line with this course.
There are several melodic moments that go to dilute background heaviness, albeit always in a plumbean and dramatic atmosphere, but the participation of many musicians helps to make a heterogeneous and diversified disc “Famine”, with medium long songs and refined structures.
If “soulsearching” let it glimpse some glimpse of light, here no hope, an hour of darkness and despair that wants to have a cathartic effect, a sort of necessary atonement. The soliloquiums manage to materialize the most black nightmares when they move in territories in their nature, with a fiercely death metal fury that merges perfectly with the darkness of the Doom, always leaving room for some trace of melody, in a context of deep and heartbreaking anguish, while they are not equally convincing in the moments in which they slow down, above all because of the voice of the Nordström itself, Skilled to produce yourself in a deep and ruthless as insecure growing in clean. This flaw is largely hidden by the performance of the guest, among whom Enas Al-Said stands out, singer already seen at work with Duncan Patterson, protagonist, with the keyboardist Bianca Höllmüller, of the ballad “The Healing Process”, but persists in some episodes such as the title-track or “Vigil”.
The best is to be found in the most usual episodes, such as the crescendo of “impractor syndrome”, the angry ups and downs of “Weight of the UNSPOKEN” and, above all, “Poison Well”, the most composite piece, with the voice of Chelsea Murphy (Dawn of Ouroboros) to aim the poisonous Screaming of the Swedish artist, in six exciting minutes who alternate minutes who alternate minutes Hypnotic outbursts and arpeggios.
“Famine” is an album with remarkable peaks, which certify the ability of the soliloquiums to write excellent pieces of melodic doom/death metal, and some more skiing junctures, the result of a not yet acquired familiarity with the other sounds faced. The definitive quality leap that we would have hoped for did not arrive, but it is widely within the reach of the Stockholm duo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvzntucxjcc