Die Sonne Satans

Album Title: 
Metaphora
Release Date: 
Friday, May 4, 2018
Label: 
Distribution: 
Review Type: 

Well well well, this is a great surprise for the audience! AnnapurnA is re-issuing a very old recording by Italian cult-act Die Sonne Satans, or if you want, Die Sonne Satan (without the additional ‘s’ at the end – what does it matter anyway). Metaphora was once created in the early Nineties, and did appear on a split with another great Italian act, Runes Order. It was in 1993 when Old Europa Café (ave!) released this split on tape. It was actually after a fragment in a book by Antonello Cresti that AnnapurnA decided to get in touch with this Florence-based project. This re-release has been remastered by Maurizio Pustianaz (think: Noisebrigade or Gerstein) and comes with some bonus tracks that are very rare and hard-to-find, coming from two different compilations. The material is available on compact disc (digipack), on vinyl and digitally.

Metaphora was (and still is!) an extremely haunting, ominous piece, inspired ‘by religious symbolism which is then transfigured, through the use of related sonorities […], into grim and haunting sceneries’. Now clocking fifty-two minutes (the bonus tracks included), this album is a great collection of eerie rituals, haunting ambience and gloomy post-industrialisation. Sounds and samples, bells, repetitive rhythms, field recordings, different percussive objects, meditative synths, suffocative drones, beautiful piano and choir-like chants… Hints of Dark Ambient, Noise, Electronica, Martial Industrial, transformed into asphyxiating and grim, then again mesmerizing and transcendental soundscapes, the sonic expression of surreal landscapes, of dimensionless areas and timeless eras beyond…

I admit: these descriptions say nothing, and all at the same time. Imagine a bastard child of some of Peter Andersson’s projects mingled with diverse hybrid-like elements from Les Joyaux De La Princesse, Future Holograms and Desiderii Marginis. I usually go much deeper into the essence, but hey, let the Aural Art do the talking. Check this out, and if you pretend to be a ‘fan’ of Dark Industrial Ambient Music’ à la Cold Spring, Cold Meat, Cryo Chamber, Malignant, Cyclic Law, Old Europa, you know, then there can not be any doubt. This is the perfect stuff to dream away, to experience, to get sonically satisfied… I have no more words to describe this orgiastic aural highlight!

PS: I think more stuff from this Italian cult-project will be re-mastered and re-released…

95/100