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Artist: EL SOTER
Album: Appletree of Discord
Year: 2008
El Soter is a brand new one man project hailing from Slovenia. The guy behind this concept is Blaz Erzetic, who some people might remember for his works in Amateur God Project. After releasing three albums with that project, the time has come for a solo project. 'Appletree of Discord' is the debut release of the solo project, released on the brand new Slovenian label Neversun Records. It consists out of 11 tracks.
After the 'Pre-Initiation' intro, the release kicks off with a track thats simply called 'Initiation'. It's a gentle accessable track, with influences from synth pop, old school gothic rock and modern gothic metal. 'The Hail' is a bit more downtempo and atmospheric. It consists of cold synth lines, guitarwork switching from clean to distorted and gentle drumwork, resulting in a song that comes with a sorrow atmosphere. 'Freak Show' follows to walk on that path, although the synthlines are less present. It contains more wave influences, and doomy guitar- and vocal works. 'Not Coming Back' opens with a little disturbing sampling and powerful drumming, while added distorted guitarwork. Overall the song is gentle and easy listening, although it contains many heavy parts. 'Sum' comes up next. It's a slow and dark track, melancholic even, containing dark sampling works and riffing and gentle drumwork and vocal lines. 'Blaming The Moon' opens with atmospheric keylines, accompanied by distorted guitars and powerful drumming. The song that follows turns out to be more metal based, with many old school touches and wave/electro influences. It's a gentle track, reminding me in a way to the works of Italian one-man project Into The Hole. 'Girl in Pink, For Example' is the weird title of the next track. It's an instrumental intermezzo, featuring clean and accoustic guitarwork and cold and experimental keylines. 'Chaos Based Directions' follows. It's again an old school based track, blessed with modern synthlines and powerful guitars and drumming. 'To The North' is again more dark and melancholic based, with heavy wave influences that are here and there upgraded by distorted guitars. This song has excellent electronic sampling. The release ends with 'Post-End', which is the outro of the album.
Lyrically, El Soter offers you many interesting things. It lets you enter the rooms of many problems and actions in daily life, such as religious frauds about the end of the world (Initiation), seeking guilt in others (Blaming The Moon) and judging others from the outside (Freak Show). The way the things are mentioned within the lyrics are extravagant and poetic, each time fitting the melodies of the track pretty well. In a way, you could classify 'Appletree of Discord' as a concept album. And before I forget to mention it; the intro and the outro are both poems by Emily Dickinson - a wellknown poetess in American literature.
Musically, everything El Soter offers you has been clearly thought about several times. Every track is more than decently built, and there aren't any small errors or weird creations hearable. The fact that El Soter did reserve some space for experimentations within the tracks can be called a compliment, when you compare it to the preverious line. The only thing in the music that didn't totally convince me were the vocal lines. They are clean, sometimes even raw, but without going to the false mode there is still some kind of weakness spottable inside the vocal lines.
Getting to the final conclusion - I think El Soter's 'Appletree of Discord' is an interesting release for people who worship the old school gods and scene, and can be named as a welcome addition to their collections. People who dig modern wave, or bands that are highly influenced by it should really give this a try too. A promising debut - and if the vocal lines were a bit more convincing, the final score should even have reached 5 to 10 points higher.
Vote: 80 / 100
Review by: Gerardo
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1. Valliant
2. Human Soul
3. The Grand Architects
4. Under Perfect Control
5. The Defenders
6. Tesla
7. Nemesis
8. I am the One
9. Chaostructure
10. Apocalypse Child
11. Vortex
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