Saor - Amidst the Ruins (ALBUM REVIEW)
Release date: February 7th 2025 (via Season of Mist)
Saor is one of those bands/projects I got into quite recently, this one around the same time I decided to give Alcest’s latest album a spin (and subsequently writing a review about it): one reason for it being the fact that Neige was featured on Saor’s 2019 album “Forgotten Path”, which was - in all honesty - a phenomenal work of aural art. A combination of soaring lead melodies coupled with rhythms that are, for the most parts, intense guarantees an emotionally charged and mesmerizing artistic calling card, one that has been washing over listeners and greatly moving them since the days Andy Marshall still called the project Àrsaidh.
Despite the rather oversaturated state of atmospheric black metal, Saor has always been among the veterans that stand leagues above the rest, and with the latest offering “Amidst the Ruins”, the Scottish black metal maestro reasserts himself within the genre’s realm with both grace and aggression.
So what’s going on in this album?
Right from the top, the sheer emotional intensity that Saor stirs up is overwhelming - to say the least: mighty black metal fury is tightly interwoven with hypnotic and soul-touching folk elements, evoking strong feelings of tear-jerking melancholy that’s also laced with stoical fortitude. This is all thanks to the intricate dynamic between conventional instruments in metal (that is, the guitars, drums, and bass) and the string sections made up of violins, violas, and cellos, giving the overall composition a beautifully transcendent energy.
To complement the instrumental complexity of “Amidst the Ruins”, the vocals are also rich in the expression range: Andy Marshall’s fusion of high screams and low growls are a particular feast for the ears. But that’s not all, as he makes liberal use of clean vocals too, especially to harmonize with Ella Zlotos - who also lays down the whistle parts within the album - and this is most clearly-illustrated in the second track “Echoes of the Ancient Land”.
What’s even more interesting than the undeniably vast assortment of musical instruments presented in this album is the choices of melody made for it: while Saor still utilizes the conventional melodic formula to craft the foundations of “Amidst the Ruins”, it’s the folk melodies played with the whistles and pipes as well as the fiddles that are the compositional highlights of this album. That’s not to say there are nothing exciting in the guitars’ pockets: the outro section of the closer track “Rebirth” has some particularly interesting choices of notes, opting for a much more brighter and hopeful modes instead of the typical metal austerity and joining in with the other instruments to create an absolutely breathtaking picture of sound.
To put it concisely, every second of this 51-minute atmospheric black metal monolith is emotionally captivating and hypnotic in the best possible way. “Amidst the Ruins”, I would say, is the perfect balance between the uptempo metal cadence that can be found in “Forgotten Path” and the serenity of “Origins” manifest, culminating in an album that is unmistakably Saor but also markedly progressive in its own ways.