“Anguish, coiled in the gut like a starving worm,” rails Michel Locher, better known to the wider world as Vorph, who since 1987 forms one half of the creative entity called Samael. Beginning in Switzerland with brother Alexandre Locher, aka Xytras, the band grew their music from a caustic, slithering Black Metal into further and more celestial corners of industrial and electronica. The song this lyric is lifted from is called “Angel’s Decay,” and 25 years after the release of its parent 1996 album Passage, Samael has decided to pay tribute to its nocturnal grace with Passage – Live.
Casting off its carapace of morbid and deeply negative Black Metal, Samael’s beloved and confounding Passage emerged as the precise balancing point between their origins and their future. Arriving just as second-wave Black Metal was beginning to germinate into weirder and wider iterations, one would be hard-pressed to find a more satisfying collision of Satanic darkness and Industrial music. Other than Mysticum and Aborym, there were not too many bands around at the time attempting this cohesion.
Recorded in Krakow, Poland, along with the current lineup of Ales Campanelli, aka Ales, on bass guitar, and Thomas Betrisey, aka Drop, on guitars, Passage – Live is exactly what it claims to be in the title. Sounding fresh and recharged, fans here are treated to a worthy tribute to an album that, though somewhat divisive of the fanbase, is regarded as both classic and timeless.
Everything, from Vorph’s articulated growl, to his brother’s adroit keys and rich percussion, sounds like the band recorded the studio version only a short time ago. The crowd noises worked in at the end of the dulcet “Moonskin” melds nicely with the music, having the effect of making the listener long for that incomparable live setting. Vorph offers solid introductions to the album’s hits, such as the “epic and Wagnerian” banger known as “Born Under Saturn.” The guitar tone is evident in its richness, and the band does not stray from what they laid down back in 1996 with Waldemar Sorychta at the helm.
Down to the red-tinged moon on the cover, directly related to the simple black/gray countenance of the lunar shape on the cover of Passage, apart from the jazzed up intro to “Rain,” Samael has done a far better job leaving this marvel to breathe without tinkering with it. Unlike, say, when they performed 1994’s Ceremony of Opposites in its entirety some years ago. The sonic electronic accoutrements there worked a bit against the darker, more simplistic Black Metal of the material. Not so here, not even a little bit.
Samael is firing on all cylinders with a great lineup, and their enthusiasm is evident in their playing. Whether it is the added bounce on “Shining Kingdom,” or the stygian dancehall stomp of “The Ones Who Came Before,” this is an essential self-tribute to the anniversary of one of the most darkly majestic, unforgettable and unique Extreme Metal albums ever conceived. For this reason, Cryptic Rock gives Passage – Live 5 out of 5 stars.
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