I’m going to start by being clear with this album is to listen to it and watch it, why watch it? Because you must walk from introspection to understand a connection that truly carries the essence of Sol Sistere from beginning to end.

What would music be if it couldn’t express what we feel? If it were not that mirror where it is reflected in solitude, each of our bodies in tune with the same sincere expression that each note exerts, from the ashes of a half-life that drags all the memory of a past, it is presented as a lump in the throat, expressing a distant cry of regret, that which contrasts with the thickness of memories and consciousness. 

The first glimpse I have of this album is that it resorts to a process of catharsis, which is in tune with those melancholic passages referring to the afair  of separation from the habitually, from the commonplace; a desolation that supplies each space with a Hellenic tendency towards death. 

In The Shimmer Part I, you see a door that leads you to the confrontation, you don’t know yet, but there is a fear that clings to the indecision whether to go back, to hide, or to continue.  You walk on unsteady ground, memories passing over you as if they were entities. You are paralyzed by bursts of what you are about to face, a one-way entry into the vast space of the mind.

The Narrow Path is life, where fears and failures coexist and meet, the odyssey for a meaning and the continuous need to find it among the futility, here they unite and explode among pure, strong and precise feelings expressed musically, what the human being is, from the mind that is a house, to the vast thickness of mountains, seas and the wind, that which drags and expands a creation that is growing, in a soil humidified by the suffering of existence, the one that drowns. In particular, I must admit that the humanist state of confrontation of the reality that unquestionably shouts out the vitality of the human being and his need to be nothing, but still aware that in the end nothingness is where everything is found, are manifested in this album.  It is the desolation from a context that goes beyond staying in one aspect of suffering, tearing the aspects of a life that counts day by day its first or multiple falls, but that in the end arrives to the same path, which is a void, but can hide a purpose of consciousness and interconnection with everything that is alive, and is here, being part of the same human being.

Everything burns as non-existence when it has to disappear in order to rise again from the field of ashes that fertilize the soil and resurface in trees. Ashes is the transitory stage where this entity is transformed into  sublime and eternal,  which is constantly renewed in different forms and  is in everything, this is the interconnection of the meaning of this album. It is not impossible to understand the harrowing that goes through the fire of this body, until, at the end of this piece, it is already extinguished, but with the capacity to be scattered. A constant theme of ten minutes and nine seconds, makes you contemplate a transition from the corporeal to the subtle.

The greatness of being human is found in itself, always in there when it can be contemplated from being and nothingness, from innocuousness and emptiness.  From its characteristic atmospheric base Sol Sistere connects us with its continental roots, from the Andean Chile, where the Nothofagus are found, of a travelling and evolutionarily strong nature. From the South Central Chile, through this song, the album makes its presence felt as a kind of humanistic redemption and connection to everything from the waters to the vast open fields of forests, considering in turn a cult, a veneration of the fertile land.

Black Mass reminds us of the consolidation of knowledge from the earth, from the ritual of a darkness that does not prevent the being from its transformation, but pushes it to create itself from emissions of power from the interior, as if in codes, it shows us the branches of that life and death tree. Again they speak from the pondering of the human being towards a emancipation of his own.

I see The Shimmer Part II as a reminder that everything is a cycle where there are infinite laws as if it were a question of return and recurrence, of a constant visualization and an abandonment that does not cease, because attachment cannot become the subject, the work and the owner of our energy.

Unspoken Verb extends with force from the vocals to the sound of each instrument making presence as the one who arrives strong, cautious and precise, ready to dominate and be in space, everything.

The last song Sol Sistere is the awakening in the recognition of the individual being, with the beginning between the calm that presents a certain desolation, gentle, not discreet, a creator itself of innumerable universes.

So that’s it! What they want to say is that it is a journey from the death from aspects of ourselves that come to a personal redemption such as the one originated through death, but this is only reached from a sense of withdrawal, from a purging.

In truth the album speaks of the process of freedom to which the individual is subjected in order to acquire that self-redemption which begins with a deliberate feeling of detachment from life, basically suicide, because you have to touch the bottom of the sea in order to raise a state of consciousness, and in truth the tree speaks a lot about the connection between above and below, that is the perfect conjunction of space that becomes conducive to an evolution.

Now, what perhaps everyone has been waiting for in this review, the technical aspect of the musical composition behind this unique piece.

In this album, the drums have an interesting weight with dry drums, little use of snare, the guitar with a clean sound and melancholic chords that give a depth to the piece, the vocals are close to the Black Metal sound but with more modern and clean tones,  it has elements of bands like Alcest or Opeth with more gloomy atmospheres but it has more to do with melancholy, a tendency of Post Black marked with Atmospheric sounds that give the presence of sustainability of the guitar, as if it was dragged by the wind, very much reminiscent of concepts like those of Aural. The drums sound very natural and have enough room, although the bass can be felt, despite being a bit buried, it sharpens and lets its reverberation be felt, with a parsimony that may not be noticed and reappears with more strength, especially in the last seconds, the drummer uses few counter-tempos and syncopations, but considering with rudeness and notoriety its fit within the atmosphere.

Indeed, the whole conception and work of this band deserves to be remembered, not only for its musical aspects but also for its ability to show a unique and strong identity. Undoubtedly it is difficult to say a number, I want you to put it for me after listening to it, I will give an approximation, as life gives when we walk this path, short, tight and sharp. 9-10