Day: May 4, 2022

After a series of albums released in the last decade of the last century (including the essential Solar Lovers), Celestial Season were back twenty years after the last full length with a convincing work as The Secret Teachings, where they reproposed that sound legitimately son of the British gothic doom school of which they had been sublime interpreters, setting aside the stoner pulsions that had surfaced in subsequent releases. With the new Mysterium I, which should represent the first part of a trilogy, the Dutch band consolidates the coordinates exhibited on the occasion of the reunion album, demonstrating once again that it is possible to take important steps forward while still looking at the past. In fact, the new full length, like its predecessor, possesses that antique smell that doesn’t emanate a stale odor, but that perfume that every now and then each of us happens to catch at certain junctures, capable of bringing us back with the memory to events or places that coincided with pleasant moments of our existence. This is exactly what has caused, at least in me, listening to Mysterium I, a work that is not a calligraphic nostalgic exhibition, because the Celestial Season continue to interpret the genre with the personality that was recognized at the time of Solar Lovers, updating the sound to the parameters of modern times but without losing their trademark typical of the nineties. In the forty minutes of the album they alternate more painful passages, as always punctuated by the use of the violin, to others more pressing, leaving from the first to the last note only good feelings, those that normally remain impressed after a reunion with old friends.

2022 – Burning World Records