SaturninE – S/T Demo
Wait, this is a demo? There’s no way, there’s just no way. This little beauty was tucked away in a box the old editor had in his possession, and this guy, new editor, found it while digging through the dregs to find the goodies to actually review (that’s how we do it now, not everything can have its due). Cover, yes, looks promising, so on a trip this one came along with others for a quick sampling of sound, but it’s only one of three that survived past a cursory listen. Luckily, as usual, the album was consumed without any pretense, without looking around about the band or learning a single thing about them, other than the name. Once this one was in, it was clearly a keeper, it was a “yes, I’ll come back to this” – er. And, double lucky, it was taken in without knowing anything about the band, which consists of five girls. Why does that matter? Is this guy sexist or something? Hold your tongue, the answer is no. However, we’re well aware around here of what girl power can do, because we used to have a girl writer and she’d occasionally show us screencaps of her daily Facebook feed, which was littered with creepy PMs, odd friend-requests that turned into creepy PMs, and like millions of likes and “hey gurl” comments on her page. The problem is simple, with music, guys can sometimes be stupid if girls are involved. If they hear something moderately good, it suddenly becomes utterly awesome when there’s at least one girl in there. Here, however, SaturinE was grasped in its essence musically before any of this came into play.
But yes, SaturinE is five girls, from Italy, and they play a wicked, blackened form of crusty sludge/doom that reeks of the occult. Most demos we get, and we do review them, are typically of the garage quality, but the production value on this S/T is actually incredibly high. SaturinE has just the right amount of tearing, grating lo-fi in their tone, and they have an equally powerful grasp of that classic, modern doom sound that becomes second nature when you learn how it’s done. And they’ve done this, clearly. SaturinE opens with an awesomely depressing intro, and then into the work proper with “Abyss” where you finally get to hear the vocals, which are delivered with a light amount of echo so they sound like they’re reaching from out of a chasm like a siren to pull you down into the blackness. The majority of their grooves are clean and without extraneous ornament.
SaturinE keeps this going consistently, and that’s really it’s only fault. For a demo, it’s God damn sick. For a full-length first release, if that’s what it was, also God damn sick. It excels in its simplicity, and these girls can crush like the best of them, in fact since this was first listened to without any previous knowledge, it makes it that much more genuine. Girls? Doesn’t matter, that’s just part of what they are, we don’t even need to make any further issue with it. The only thing they could stand to do in the future is develop some more of that sound, because it’s almost simple to a fault. Some of the later tracks have some tendencies to drag slightly, desperately crying out for a corrupted, ligament tearing solo, or perhaps a touch of speed at certain points going beyond the progressions they already have. It also includes a nice Bathory cover, and ends with an outro that reiterates the opener and says a final, brooding goodbye. For a demo this is an excellent chunk of sludge/doom, and this band needs a lot more attention. This is an older release, but we’re happy to review it, and hopefully they’ll have something coming soon since it’s been about two years later.
Written by Stanley Stepanic
SaturninE – S/T Demo
Self-Released
4 / 5
