Post-Rock from the capital of Metal, Birmingham, UK. It is not surprising that Solars’ music is ladden with the timbre of the heavy riffs that originated in this city.
Solars is not your average Post-Rock band. Of course, there is emotion, there are soaring glistening tremolos, translucent riffs and hints of swelling crescendos. But the band fuses their Post-Rock with Heavy Metal in the way they develop the music. Sometimes one guitar might play high-pitched soaring tremolos while the other discharges heavy riffs built on the foundation of diverse drumming and low-end bass.
Though the music is engaging, uplifting, and, as on ”A Hill To Die On”, closing in on Rock´n´Roll, the aura surrounding the album with its bleak cover, its song title, and not at least the album´s title is a foreboding one. It is built on an uneasiness of what goes on in the world, not least the climate crisis. But it is in no way polemical, it is subtle and it is up to the listener to interpret the musical themes and how they unfold. The music is free and surprisingly complex and coherent at the same time. Not all songs take their inspiration from the crisis that surrounds us; the emotional music on the last track ”Ablation” is about the dissolving of a marriage as the press release tells.
The album´s opener ”Holocene” certainly sets the mood for reflective brooding as it opens with an extract of a speech David Attenborough held and which is known as A Message To World Leaders at the UN Climate Change Summit.. As the speech goes from describing the vibrant nature to the problems the world is facing, the underlying music changes from glistening to a rumbling bass-led musical theme as the guitars becomes somewhat somber. Without being able to put the finger on exactly what, the aura that surrounds the album´s music seems to give the music a bit of impatient urgency on every track. It might be the song’s title, and the speech that makes the drums seem impatient and restless, the bass a rumbling warning while the guitars tensely hover, flutter, and glide from the highest pitches to the heaviest riffs. But this impatient urgency is certainly what makes the music on this album compelling, vibrant, and passionate as the music shifts and spirals forward.
Consistent with the album´s title and the speech by Attenborough, the second track is aptly called ”Retrograde”. The track sways between heavy riffs and lighter guitars. The rhythm is fast with diverse drums and a melodic bass that paves the grooves for the music to follow. Towards the end, the music takes a breath before it goes into a swirling mode with an ever-faster and faster repetitive and hurried pace. ”Doomscrolling” opens in a light mode before it fuses into an demanding flow when one guitar goes for a slow melodic solo beside the stem of the heavy flow from the others. It melts back to an urgent pace before the higher-pitched guitar rises once more. There are shifts and open breathers with drums, low-end bass, and a glistering guitar answering a lower-tuned one. At the bottom the bass seemingly plays without connection to the other instruments before everything is fused with fast drums and guitars, and a bass driving head-on to a shift where the melodic theme from the opening is repeated, now more yearning than before.
The title song is a seven-minute ride through tempo changes after the subtle opening with guitar picking and strumming before the bass and drums join in. As the music flows on, one guitar plays a clean melodic theme while the other one keeps the strumming. Supported by the grooves from the bass and double takes on the drums, the music makes an imperceptible shift into a glissading and reflective tempo. It swells with tremolos before it surges and engages with the melodic theme and heading forward. The music is constantly changing, driven by energetic and diverse drumming, rolling bass, and heavy riffs. It ebbs and flows and surges into a crescendo with high-pitched melodic tremolos and a fuzzy take on the riffs. It forms an engaging end to the title song.
”A Hill To Die On” is a fast song with chugging and riffing heaviness underlined by the powerful low-end bass. It is a fast song, closing in on Rock´n´Roll, with strong guitar lines that dive in and out between solos and fuzzy parts. The song has very shifty Heavy Metal riffs, a tempo with a sense of Rock´n´Roll and high-pitched translucent riffs lifted from the Post-Rock vault. The title of the penultimate song ”Inertia” reflects the speech from the first track. It opens with swaying guitars and a diverse rhythm section. The shaky riffs become a bit dissonant as the shivering increases. The music has an urgent sense to it even when it becomes wide-reaching with high-pitched and glistening guitars that swell repeating a theme towards the end.
”Ablation” closes the album and has a slow-paced reflective opening with a fast guitar contrasting the slower guitar. As one guitar forms a melodic theme you sense that something will change when the snare drums are hit fast with the bass and the guitars are lurking in the shadows slowly building towards a raising translucent crescendo in the middle of the song. There is a part when the music pans out and fuses together, swirls around the stem of the music. Suddenly the whole track changes its mode as one guitar goes for a soaring, longing solo before it simmers down with the bass leading toward all-together somber end of the album.
