Today I am writing about one of the few metal bands I've actually known before starting my journey into becoming the most annoying metal nerd around: Samael. I've known the mini album Exodus (1998) and their fifth studio album Eternal (1999) as well as Xytras' version of Passage (1997) from my husband's CD collection. Samael was one of the metal bands I could enjoy listening to, probably because the symphonic elements made the music more approachable for non-metal fans like me. While I was aware of Samael as a symphonic black metal band, I was not familiar with their black metal roots. So for this blog article I chose their second studio album Blood Ritual.
Samael was founded in 1987 in Sion, Switzerland by Michael Locher (aka Vorphalack/Vorph) and Pat Charvet. Vorph acted as vocalist, guitarist and bassist while Charvet played the drums. In 1988 Vorph's brother Alexandre Locher (aka Xytraguptor/Xy/Xytras) took over from Charvet and started to play the drums and keyboards. In 1991 Christophe Mermod (aka Masmiseîm) joined the brothers as bass player. Soon after the band released their black metal debut album Worship Him which has a cult following among second wave black metal fans.
Blood Ritual was released in 1992 and is still considered to be a black metal album (compared to Samael's following work). The cover artwork and lyrics are screaming black metal and I had a certain expectaton when hitting the play button. After the demonic intro part (FUN), I was in for a surprise though. Instead of screeching vocals, fast guitar shredding and complex song structures I was welcomed by this slow and throbbing, heavy, nearly gloomy riff of Beyond the Nothingness that is just pure and basic metal. The song takes its time and for nearly two minutes all you hear is riffing and drumming and it is just perfect. The song is so reduced to the basics without getting boring.
The complete album has a length of roughly 40 minutes and features 11 tracks. Apart from Macabre Operetta and With the Gleam of the Torches which are over 6 minutes long, all the songs have an average length.
The sound of all songs is slow and heavy and slow passages give way to even slower passages only to pick up again a bit at the end. The influence of Bathory and Hellhammer/Celtic Frost is very audible and more than once I was reminded of Quorthon, his voice and way to compose a song. But there are also strong thrashy, palm muted, chugging riffs that remind of Slayer, Sodom and Kreator.
The only execption on the album is the eponymous song Blood Ritual which picks up the pace a bit and comes closer to what one would expect from second wave black metal.
Samael's Blood Ritual is the first black metal album I was able to listen to without investing any work. It got me right from the start and the basic, steady, simple monotony of the songs made it easy to listen to, even as a background music. When listening closer I noticed that there are subtle changes in each song that actually make them very interesting: Time changes, drum fills, keyboard/synth/acoustic guitar sections, vocalisations, growls. Even if the songs sound rather similar at first, each song has at least one defining element one can latch on to. My favourite songs togehter with the opener Beyond the Nothingness are After the Sepulture, Macabre Operetta and With the Gleam of the Torches. All songs are on my playlist.
This won't have been my last Samael album and similarly to Bathory, I am very much looking forward to discovering their full discography. Stay tuned 🤘
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