Soulsearching

For a moment in 2022, it seemed that Soliloquium could become the next big thing in gothic/doom metal, but reception was limited, and ensuing pauses without much news hampered their recognition: allegedly, a new album is in the works, but the dates of release or completion are still unknown, so we may as well wait for a few months more still. Formed as a studio-only solo project of guitarist Stefan Nordström with programmed drumming, the project released four albums so far, which is not a lot, considering they'll reach 13 years of activity soon. Apart of a bit of presence on webzines like Metal Storm (where Nordström has been an active user), the project is virtually unknown to most listeners, and never signed with any more relevant label, despite the increased exposure of gothic/doom metal around 2010's.

The project's fourth album, 2022's Soulsearching, is everyday job for them, and features more of the same morose-sounding gothic/doom metal with occasionally steps into death/black metal aggression heavily derivative of My Dying Bride, Swallow the Sun and Draconian. Opener Floodgates opens with a slashing blackgaze intro with blast-beating and dramatic C#-minor riffs derived from Austere and Woods of Desolation, but also features a slower chorus with dual clean vocals and heavier breakdowns with growling.

Stillwater is based on stomping mid-tempo F#-minor chording with sixth-minors and a lengthy repetitive clean guitar arpeggio designed to build up tension, while the shortest cut, Missing Pieces, is a step into pop/post-rock balladry with sole clean vocals and open-chord guitar arpeggios akin to Coldplay which reveals Nordström’s weak intonation. The remaining tracks stick closer to the opening trio’s monolithic grooves, but Diaspora features clean vocals only and is based on persistent mid-tempos and major-triad vocal melodies close to 00’s emo-core, Finality features faster hardcore sledgehammering akin to Entombed and Cradle of Filth but ends like a re-write of the previous song, and the same goes for the final, slower title track.

For being the product of a very minor band (but not an autoproduction, especially due to being under Naturmacht Production), this album features strong production and arrangements, despite the digital composition process. There’s excess of growling, possibly due to Nordström’s lack of confidence, groove-oriented repetitiveness abounds and some sections don’t seem to work that well (the death-tending slams of Finality), but overall this album isn’t really bad. Better albums may have been released in gothic/doom niche around the same time, but overall, Soliloquium may be the most accessible name so far, and may take the place of the long gone Saturnus. But then again, "merely a spark of belief" may not be enough anymore.