Bringing ferocious doom and swirling melodies, Terra Builder's debut comes with the convergence of some under-heralded German musicians generally outside of this specific subgenre. But with extra-unintelligible logowork and a cool album cover, it was hard for this not to catch an eye.
The general atmosphere we're presented with this album is dark, bleak, and uncomfortable, like the outer-space horror they're going for. We're immediately thrown into a dreary death-doom soundscape on "End of Orbit" that explodes into more ferocious metal riffage. Things vary just enough with spacey riffs and doom influence to be interesting. There's few moments to be described as quite "catchy", but the solid writing between the chugs and more monotonous explosions gives it enough to stand a level above generic-ness.
The intensity of the vocals tends to stand out a bit more than the sometimes-more-bored guitar and drums. Solar Temple can sometimes feel like standard for the genre, like the guys got together and went "okay, what's a pretty regular death metal riff in the style of Incantation?". Most of the journey through this album comes as par for the course, with enough emotion thrown into the screams to keep pulling you further. You'll happen across some cool little chugs and atmospheric solos, that are all just good enough but are provided more as an element than a display of technicality.
But this isn't to say this is just above-average writing through-and-through. There truly are some standout moments of grandiosity to be had. The track "Abyss" slows down just past its midpoint, building up to a near-theatrical blastbeated melody of dread. "Dead Celestial" breaks things down in its first minute, before spending most of its runtime with heavier guitar solo leads. "Cryogenic Sleep" closes out the album with more intense and varied riffing throughout, hitting some gnarly chugs halfway through before transitioning into the strongest solo of the album, until it throws you right back into its doomy melodies.
Overall, Solar Temple is a solid debut by this new project that shows enough interesting thematics and cool little pieces to warrant an eye out for their progression. Their logo is built for merch, so we can hope it goes up from here.