Review: Soulburn “Noa’s D’ark” [Century Media Records]

After four years of silence the long-awaited album “Noa’s D’ark” from Dutch legends Soulburn is released via Century Media, offering almost an hour of juicy and gloomy heaviness. These guys always have been ruthless, their music is a killer by all accounts, scattering the chaos and penetrating through the darkness into the core of human mind. This music is soaked in various dark emotions, which are truly contagious during the process of listening.

Soulburn needs no introduction for those who are fond of Dutch doom/death metal, in particular Asphyx, because in the middle of 90s Asphyx was rebranded to Soulburn. Right now both bands still exist, and from the old line-up only the guitarist Eric Daniels has remained. In truth, they have moved away from their roots, and continue to evolve their style closer to black metal, but there’s no way to avoid analogies to Asphyx (especially on song “Anointed – Blessed – And Born For Burning”). But Soulburn went farther ahead, combining black metal with death and doom metal, merging them so harmoniously, that you even can’t notice these stylistic changes, all these extreme metal elements are entwined so coherently. And miraculously written material makes it almost impossible thoroughly to explore the stylistic structures of compositions.

Some songs begin with very slow doomy intros (“The Morgue Of Hope” or “Anarchrist”), transforming later into fast and intense material through the debris of speed/black and death/thrash metal. But the most part of the tracks is performed in mid-tempo with fast-track punky choruses (“The Godless I”) or quite the opposite, serious and slowed-down passages. There are some peculiar moments on “Noa’s D’ark” – ritualistic and minimalistic singing on song “Triumphant One”, atmospheric and enigmatic synths on “From Archaeon Into Oblivion” and acoustic passage on “The Morgue Of Hope”. The meaty guitar chords are the base of the songs, the drums quite often create high-pressure and occult atmosphere, but the diverse range of extreme vocals of Twan van Geel envelops into storm of sinister emotions. But nevertheless, the music of Soulburn essentially sounds philosophically enlightened, but concentrating on the topics of death and evil, this musical journey certainly doesn’t aim for the light.

The current line-up of Soulburn has a colossal musical experience regarding the recording sessions, as well as stage practice, they are truly professionals; that goes without saying. And though their music isn’t the breath of fresh air on the metal scene, it is performed not only with high-quality and exalted integrity. It is drenched in darkest sensations, black as night, able for this one hour to set aside all the real life to dive into an unexplored darkness, created to absolutely blow your mind.

Release date: November 13th, 2020

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