Saturnus - Paradise Belongs To You review
| Band: | Saturnus |
| Album: | Paradise Belongs To You |
| Style: | Gothic doom metal |
| Release date: | 1997 |
| Guest review by: | Constantine |
01. Paradise Belongs To You
02. Christ Goodbye
03. As We Dance The Paths Of Fire And Solace
04. Pilgrimmage Of Sorrow
05. The Fall Of Nakkiel (Nakkiel Has Fallen)
06. Astral Dawn
07. I Love Thee
08. The Underworld
09. Lament For This Treacherous World
Saturnus's debut is a strikingly gloomy and atmospheric piece of doom music.
The album beings with birds chirping and then music starts, it's giving you the creeps, until a melody kicks in and suddenly you are invested in this world that has opened before your ears. The chirping is a recurring theme in this album and adds so much to the already masterful gothic-like feel of the sound. The melodic guitar is brilliant, it delivers so much emotional depth and it sets the atmosphere for everything. The riffs are memorable and will haunt your dreams for a long time, especially great is the title song's riff, so look out for that. The drums are spot on in this album, they do what they have to do perfectly, with overall great production.
In regards to the vocals, they are perfect, and I literally can't think of a better direction Saturnus could have taken them in. Jensen is excellent for clean vocals and his growls are fantastic, the vocals give you the feel of darkness but with a glimpse of light at the end. The album is focused around that sort of atmosphere, and it hits the spot dead on.
There are great acoustic pieces in the album too, the highlight being "The Fall of Nakkiel." A 5 minute acoustic masterpiece with female and male whispers for vocals, this is as gothic as it gets. Also I really loved the ending song which should probably used when someone needs a definition of the word beautiful.
There isn't a weak song in this album, every song is memorable. From probably one of the best openers to a gothic doom album ever ("Paradise Belongs to you") to the death doom opus "Christ Goodbye," to the melancholic "Pilgrimage of Sorrow," to one of my favorite songs ever, "I Love Thee," and the great riffs of "The Underworld"... this is an album for the ages.
Paradise Belongs To You is a masterpiece, and every time I listen to it it's like I'm being taken away for a walk on a dark but beautiful park full of faded trees and birds. You can feel the landscape this album carves in your heart, it makes you feel things deep in you, and this to me is the biggest praise I can give to any music.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 10 |
| Songwriting: | 10 |
| Originality: | 10 |
| Production: | 10 |
Written by Constantine | 17.01.2014
Guest review disclaimer:
This is a guest review, which means it does not necessarily represent the point of view of the MS Staff.
This is a guest review, which means it does not necessarily represent the point of view of the MS Staff.
Comments
Comments: 6
Visited by: 128 users
| ScreamingSteelUS Editor-in-Chief Admin Posts: 6090  |
Great review. I'll have to check this out now.
---- "Earth is small and I hate it" - Lum Invader I'm the Agent of Steel.
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| Erik M. Posts: 3104  |
Dammit, you nailed it man. Good job.  But I did always view this album to be their LEAST gothic album and I wouldn't label it as gothic doom but more as atmospheric/melodic death doom (although I guess it's way more doom than death). Even though I only discovered this album a bit less than 3 years ago, I have since then regarded it as Saturnus' best work and it's also easily one of the best albums ever for me. But I still wouldn't rate it a perfect 10 (literally nothing is worthy of that, since no album is perfect for me), but rather a 9.6 - 9.8 or something. One thing I dislike for example is the last song which has a lot of white noise. Something like that alone makes it imperfect, as it's pretty annoying. As for the other ratings, I would rate them like this: Performance: 10 Songwriting: 9 Originality: 10 Production: 9
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| Erik M. Posts: 3104 |
Written by [user id=135303] on 20.01.2014 at 23:16 I obviously own the album, so yes, the "white noise" is on the real album as well. Fair enough about rating it a 10. I would never rate anything a 10.0 but everyone has a different way of rating stuff.  And damn you for asking for my favourite song, because it's incredibly hard to pick one.  If I really had to choose I'd go for the title song as it's just damn awesome, but then I think about the other songs and they are (almost) equally awesome.Fair enough about Saturn in Ascension, I'm not so sure about that one. But especially Martyre is definitely way more gothic to this, as it's easily their most gothic album... and worst album as well, I totally agree with that. Very good stuff, but extremely underwhelming compared to the epicness and majesty of Paradise Belongs to You. The thing about gothic music is: it's often gothic because of the theme and atmosphere, not just because of some riffings like is the case in other genres of metal. Then again, a piano and especially violin often make music (sound) gothic. In any case, we both agree there's a certain amount of gothic in this. 
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| Erik M. Posts: 3104 |
Just listened to the album again and suddenly remembered that the words "Paradise Belongs to You" are softly spoken at the very end of the album, so the last 10 seconds or so. I thought you might find this a funny thing to know (that is, if you didn't know it already).
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| MelancholiaC Posts: 153  |
I have a deeper emotional connection to Saturn In Ascension (which is very close to being the most important album of my entire life), but this is a close second favourite Saturnus release for me. The atmosphere is more folk-ish and nothing short of sublime. A very monumental album for the genre in retrospect.
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| Bad English Tage Westerlund Posts: 62297  |
Those birds were best, satoday we want put some extreme riffs, basically all must be extreme, same time we forgot about emotions what makes music real. Awesome review an
---- I stand whit Ukraine and Israel. They have right to defend own citizens. Stormtroopers of Death - "Speak English or Die"  I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
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, Martyre maybe but it's their weakest album anyways.. (I just can't get myself to really like that whole album.. Hits total: 6276 | This month: 3