THE LINEAR SCAFFOLD

Now here's a surprise. Solefald on Prog Archives. The open-mindedness of the prog metal team flabbergasts me again. Where can I sign up ?

Solefald is an avant-garde black metal (or post black metal) affair, very much like Arcturus (La Masquerade Infernale) and Ephel Duath (Phormula) are. Progressive, you may ask ? You betcha !!! More progressive than some so-called progressive bands, in any case.

The Linear Scaffold, as an album, is anything but linear. We are taken through so many different moods throughout this album it is hard to keep track. From black metal blast beats to beautiful piano motifs, from screeching vocals to spoken word poetry, from folk to classical, all within these 40 minutes. Noise ? Not at all. In fact, the songs in themselves are coherent, and, strangely enough, so is the album. The production is average, but works well enough for the type(s) of music. The execution of the two musicians here is not flawless (it was, after all, their first album as Solefald), but the brilliant and original ideas displayed more than make up for it.

If you are the adventurous type, you ought to give this album a few spins, as one will probably not do, unless you are an avant-garde open minded nut. Not into metal ? Stay away, we'll keep this excellent album to ourselves !

Four stars, and this is their first effort !

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.