THE LINEAR SCAFFOLD

I can see from earlier reviews of The Linear Scaffold the debut album from norwegian extreme metal band Solefald that the album is praised as being very experimental and that it signaled a renewal in the black metal genre at the time of it´s release. I must partially agree as I also think this is a good album and that there probably wasn´t many like it back in 1997. There are a few things that keeps this from being an excellent album though and for me it´s especially the vocals.

Processed vocals in black and death metal have never been my cup of tea and especially not when you sound like Filthy Danni from Cradle of Filth using his pig squeal vocals. I´m sorry but that just turns me off. It´s ok for a song or two but then it becomes comical and what you don´t want in extreme metal is to be comical. Actually the vocal perfomances are very varied but the squealing vocals are omnipresent throughout the album and it bothers me. The clean vocals which are very nordic sounding in their paatos are very good.

The music is pretty diverse too ranging from melodic black metal to more avant garde excursions. It never gets weird though and the many acoustic parts helps the album to be very dynamic.

Both Cornelius and Lazare are very competent musicians there´s no doubt about that. Great singers and instrumentalists.

The sound quality isn´t the best but it´s not disturbing my listening pleasure and that´s the most important thing.

All in all a very good debut album from Solefald, even though I really can´t stand the pig squeal vocals, but I can live with that because the rest of the music is very good. 3 stars for this album is what I will give.