Solar Lovers (Solar Lovers - Celestial Season)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Solar Lovers - Celestial Season
Date:	24/04/08 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some beautiful, classically-influenced doom metal.

Disadvantages: Stoner rock prominence weakens the effect.

Celestial Season is a doom metal band from the Netherlands, playing a more atmospheric and classically-influenced variant of the death-doom pioneered by England's My Dying Bride and Anathema, but managing to exceed even their finest early works in terms of emotiveness and beauty. The violins and cellos add a haunting extra dimension that not only enhance the slow, melancholic chugging of the rock instruments, but are frequently called upon to take over entirely, most notable in the brief, classical interludes 'Body as Canvas' and 'Fandango.'

The strange thing about this album is how far it swings in the other direction, with the contrasting instrumentals 'The Holy Snake' and 'A Tune From The Majestic Queen's Garden' favouring a stoner rock tone and style. While the fusion of these two separate strands of doom metal (atmospheric beauty and stoner fun) certainly aids this band's distinctiveness, it also weakens the overall effect and robs 'Solar Lovers' of the doom crown it may have inherited, comparable to the elite of My Dying Bride's 'The Angel and the Dark River' and Anathema's 'Serenades.'

Songs such as 'The Scent of Eve' and opener 'Decamerone' are both perfect works of atmospheric doom, but the album is a little too bipolar overall to afford an entirely engrossing experience.

1. Decamerone
2. Solar Child
3. Body as Canvas
4. Soft Embalmer of the Still Midnight
5. Will You Wait for the Sun?
6. The Holy Snake
7. Dancing to a Thousand Symphonies
8. Vienna (Ultravox cover)
9. Fandango
10. The Scent of Eve
11. A Tune From The Majestic Queen's Garden

Summary: Celestial Season's second album (1995).