By: Dave Allan Guzda
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Released on September 11, 2015 via Consouling Sounds
The band SardoniS is named after a super villain from a children’s TV series who terrorized everyone he came into contact with. This name fits the two-piece Belgium instrumental rockers well. They create their own form of musical villainy with Roel Paulussen’s thunderous riffs and the turbulent drum throttling by Jelle Stevens. Their new album is simply entitled III and continues the aural beat down that their previous album II brought.
Arranging songs with only guitar and drums some might think creating engaging instrumental music might be difficult. SardoniS clearly didn’t get this memo. Perhaps they were attending Tony Iommi’s School of Monster Riffs instead? Each of the five songs on III are at least six minutes and possess an intriguing balance of melody, aggression and tempo. SardoniS know how to write groovy, penetrating material capable of rocking at various tempos. ‘Roaming the Valley’ illustrates the band’s clever tempo shifting skills. The track opens with droning guitar steeped in anguish. The pace is slow and haunting like the final steps of a dead man walking. Then suddenly the track escalates into angry short stabbing riffs accompanied by fast deeply toned drums. The drum sounds throughout this album have a really deep and brash tonality. Every single beat seems to spawn haunting and unsettling concussive energy. The drums are especially evident on ‘Ruined/Decay’. The Orcs from Moria would certainly be impressed.
Not surprisingly the track ‘Battering Ram’ is precisely that. A repeated bludgeoning of rolling toms and grim guitar that strike over and over with increasing speed and intensity. It is worth noting that even though the music is dark and combative that doesn’t mean it is a mere wash of noise. III has strong song structure throughout and melody is consistently distinct, massive and thoroughly consuming. ‘The Coming of Khan’, once it gets going, has a strikingly exultant riff that slices with sonic fury. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the 12m journey of the closing track ‘Forward to the Abyss’. It is a pensive epic crawl with dense and burdensome atmosphere that decays into bleak and strained riffs that claw and rip at your auditory soul. ‘Abyss’ lets the Kraken loose with a subtle understated forcefulness that is breathtaking to behold.
III is an impressive release for SardoniS. If you like to be captivated by melodic heavy riffs, thunderous and evocative drums and by colossal musical odysseys – then this is your poison. The musicianship by Jelle and Roel is solid. The songs achieve the sought after balance of loud and soft. It is doom. It is metal. It is going to be on my playlist for a while. Behold the power of the riff. Highly recommended.
“For the Black Wind, Fire and Steel” indeed. Wow.
