Sokrovenno - De Rerum Natura (2009)

The shit-storm of bands like Agalloch, Negura Bunget and Wolves in the Throne Room has finally reached monsoon status, and now it’s harder than ever to pick out the good bands from all these clones popping out of every dark corner in the world. Luckily for us, Sokrovenno is a very good band that this storm has produced.

Hailing from Italy, this “Philosophical Pagan Black Metal” band is actually one of the best we have reviewed this month. Alongside the new albums from Negura Bunget and Alcest, “De Rerum Natura” is one of our favorites this year when it comes to the “Atmospheric Dark/Black Metal” genre combination.

All the elements of Black Metal you love are here, the tremolo-picking, the harsh vocals, minus the chaotic blastbeats. The ‘brutality’ aspect in this release has been replaced by very well crafted melodic passages. We always find these melodic passages to be our determining factor in which bands of these genres are good and which ones suck. Sokrovenno passed this test with flying colors, since their passages (in our opinion) actually portray the whole mysticism behind the band’s concept and ideas about nature.

The band’s ability to create well crafted songs is unparalleled; they can excel from all the pioneer bands from this genre if they actually added more original elements to their music. We think that if they focused more on creating songs like these, but with an extra edge, it would be enough to propel them into a bigger and more ‘starting’ role in this scene.

The interludes between songs serve greatly as a mood setting element in order to prepare us for the next beautifully crafted song. All sounds of lightning, wind and acoustic guitar sections in these interludes are top notch, we only wish they can fit them inside their songs more often to create a different and more complete listening experience.

Featuring 51 minutes in 11 tracks, “De Rerum Natura” is an album that we will surely listen to over and over. As one of the best crafted albums we have heard in 2010 (so far), we are sure the band will return better than ever with a new release in the near future. But for know we can only keep listening to “De Rerum Natura” and decipher all the hidden songs and concepts behind it. By the way, the artwork is very appealing, and the lyrics in Italian made me look for my dictionary in order to fully understand them.

Release: August 31st, 2009

Country: Italy