Friday, June 24, 2016

Sophia - "Herbstwerk" [2001]

Artist: Sophia
Title: Herbstwerk
Genre: Neoclassical, Martial Industrial
Country: Sweden
Release date: 2001

Track List: 
  1. Miserere
  2. Herbstwerk
  3. March of Strength
  4. Winterflame
  5. Inner Turmoil
  6. Copper Sun
  7. My Salvation
  8. Prost!
"Herbstwerk"is one of the first martial industrial albums I've ever heard (in mid-2000s, thanks to Noisebunker), and it left a significant impression on me at the time. It's quite standard in terms of sound, yet very qualitative, as correctly pointed out in this review:

"Pete Pettersson-Bjargo was one of Cold Meat Industry's prodigies during the 90's, doing a fine job ripping off Dead Can Dance circa 1985-87 with his project Arcana and even finding recognition amidst official metal oriented press, such as Terrorizer magazine, in the process. By the turn of the decade the prodigy decided to extend his reach into the militant realm, and thus, Sophia was conceived... Not that Pete was necessarily all too concerned with ideological mumbo-jumbo (Arcana seemed to be pretty apolitical back in those days), though who could really tell but him. Nonetheless, Sophia keenly observed the chosen stylistic margins... Sophia's debut disc exhibited significant doses of dark ambient influence, alongside patches of medieval and gothic sentiments transferred over from Arcana, which were visibly downsized on a pair of EP's anticipating "Herbstwerk". This sophomore effort, then, in retrospect, really is the most traditional, by-the-numbers martial and neo-classical full-length in the project's oeuvre and, thus, the most *traditionalist* in its aesthetic..."

I tried to find this album on Sophia's official Bandcamp page, but found only the best track from it, "March of Strength" (nevertheless, dark-world.ru always comes to the rescue...)

No comments:

Post a Comment