Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Stakes are raised and battle lines drawn as Sirenia release their new album Perils of the Deep Blue. What the Scandinavians do, the continentals especially in the newly emerging metal markets of Italy, France and further abroad try to outmatch and Britain’s Black Sabbath, still very much one of the Gods, tops with rightful fervor. It is the release of Perils of the Deep Blue that propels the Norwegian band into the realms that Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi have claimed that makes the album so intense and laden with open promise.
If Metal from Norway ever needed enhancing then the amalgamation of Ailyn’s vocals, the crashing dependence and raw guttural sound of Morton Veland’s guitars and rasping voice, Jonathan Perez’s solid drums and Jan Erik Soltvedt’s appreciative and rich, solid guitar is a good start. However Norway never seems to produce anything short of the fantastic when it comes gothic story telling in any genre. Sirenia fuse all the best elements of gothic, of the fantastical and doom laden, crunching riffs and Cathedral-like sound and employ it into an album that is full of mystery, intrigue and power as if re-awakening some ancient perilous beast that has savaged the countryside in search of blood and disorder. The beauty of Ailyn’s vocals calming the raging monster before it can do further and irrevocable damage.
It is the this female/male yin and yang combination that suits the genre perfectly, the fair but almighty maiden soothing the savagery exposed by pent up tremendous lyrics and harsh imagery and in Sirenia it doesn’t get much better.
With tracks such as Seven Widows Weep, the outstanding My Destiny Coming To Pass, the prevailing underlying violence of Decadance, the enjoyment of Stille Kom Døden and the imagery of A Blizzard Is Storming, Sirenia that Nordic and Scandinavian music and in particular Nordic Metal is one of the finest you can come across as you trawl through oceans of music in search of an album to take you away from the pressure of 21st Century living.
Perils of the Deep Blue is a cut above the meager and banal that sometimes passes itself as Metal, this is music with an attitude straining at the bit and delivering the best possible result.
Ian D. Hall