Initially released as a limited edition cassette, the debut album from Portuguese blackened-doom merchants Vaee Solis gets a CD release from co-conspirators Signal Rex and Mordgrimm, with a vinyl edition planned for 2016.
‘Adversarial Light’ is a vicious little fucker. It may operate at a slow and sludgy pace, but it’s still pretty deadly, with razor-sharp guitars shimmering in the gloom and Sofia Loureiro’s vocals passionately declaring war on her own larynx.
Certainly, it’s the vocals that impress straight off, the immense blackened rasps and howls are quite a thing to behold, but this doesn’t mean that the music takes a backseat. The guitars chime and shine with great clarity as they slowly bend and chug through the album’s six tracks of ritual and rebirth. At first the riffs hit like a stabbing pain, then linger and ache into feedback. The slow bend of notes in opening track ‘Saturn’s Storm’ create a powerful dynamic.
The rhythm section is also spot-on, and the intro to ‘Adversarial Light’ features some very tangy bass, as does ‘Ennoia’ which also possesses a suitable amount of drone.
The standout track ‘Feral Isolation’ has the savage vocals of Pedro Roque taking over from Sofia’s, desperate cries ringing out in a forest of drawn-out riffs and swirling feedback. The slow drum intro of ‘Libra’ brings in the guitars big and bold, and it is here that the vocals become particularly harrowing, with a kind of speaking in tongues/gargling with egg-whites effect being employed.
‘Cosmocrat’ is the albums epic closer, and it’s certainly its most open sounding track. The vocals declaring “…taking me higher and higher…into nothing”, as the pace is allowed to quicken, the drumming picks up, and the album ends in a (slightly) more frantic fashion.
‘Adversarial Light’ is an impressive debut, with repeated listens proving rewarding to what, at first, seems quite a stripped down approach. The production and playing is excellent, and will appeal to black metal fans as well as doom fans. The downside here may be lack of musical variety, but the albums fairly economic running time and general intensity marks out much potential for future grim and sludgy manifestos.
(7.5/10 Stuart Carroll)
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