Samael’s “Eternal” is remarkably catchy for an industrial metal album, sounding like disco music from a parallel dimension where state socialism worked and the Soviet Union won the Cold War, a kind of worker state rock n’ roll. I’m sure Samael don’t quite see it that way, but with the utopian lyrics, the synthesizer drenched choruses, and hammer clanging industrial beats (“Together” sounds like a totalitarian anthem), the music is like something you’d hear over the PA at the end of history. Someone might read this and say “hey, but Laibach already did that!” but not like this. Where Laibach revel in a certain pomposity and schmaltzy aloofness- Samael is smooth and catchy, like monolithic dance music. Their actual lyrics offer romantic yearning for an authentically better world instead of Stalinism or nationalism, and the band writes love songs- they sound tough and militaristic but reveal a band who are basically nice Swiss guys. The album takes the excessiveness of metal and industrial and runs it through a dance filter, polishing it off with a big production. Scarily powerful, blissfully intense, infectiously groovy, and sometimes quite beautiful, “Eternal” is like an collection of love songs from a post-human world.
-James Slone
VITALS:
Release: 1999
Label: Century Media
Avantgenre: Industrial Metal Future Pop
Duration: 47:19
Origin: Switzerland
Official site: None
Review online since: 27.07.2007 / 23:38:00
TRACKLIST:
01 – Year Zero
02 – Ailleurs
03 – Together
04 – Ways
05 – The Cross
06 – Us
07 – Supra Karma
08 – I
09 – Nautilus & Zeppelin
10 – Infra Galaxia
11 – Being
12 – Radiant Star
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