The Temple of Honour

The band’s name may have changed from Wolf’s Moon to Solar Wisdom but the music hasn’t really changed. “The Temple of Honour” is an album full of top-notch bombastic, symphonic and proud black metal that fulfils my high expectations. Just like on the Wolf’s Moon album, the keyboards take on an important role. They are monumental, well-audible and just about omnipresent.

Overall the production is very good, clean and professional. In other words, lovers of raw black metal – leave the hall! The guitar sound is less trebly than on the Wolf’s Moon album, this time a heavier and beefier guitar sound has been applied. This type of guitar sound sounds very good in combination with the synths and gives the music a powerful feel. The only production mishap is the bass. It’s been mixed too low for most of the album and therefore often tends to get buried under the guitars.

As I previously said, the music hasn’t really changed compared to the Wolf’s Moon album but they’ve cut down on the blast beats a bit and the catchiness of the songs has increased. Already after a couple of listens tracks like “Brightness of the Rising Sun”, “Głos Tożsamości” and “When Europe is Dying” got me firmly in their grip. “Brightness of the Rising Sun” immediately gives you an indication of what this album will be like. The guitars are riffing in a heavy manner and the keyboards provide an atmospheric backdrop. Then, as the song really gets going, the keyboards start to play a melody of their own while the guitars continue chugging along. Sometimes the keyboards are simply following the riffs, at other times the keyboard player plays something different to the guitars. On some tracks he (I assume it’s a male) also creates various background effects. “Głos Tożsamości” is a short but good song with a very floaty feel to it thanks to the massive keyboard presence. On this track there’s also a piano melody after each verse that reminds me a bit of the piano melody on the re-recorded version of Dimmu Borgir’s “Raabjørn Speiler Draugheimens Skodde”.

“Anthem of the Warrior” is the longest track on the album. Otherwise a good song with a nice keyboard solo to boot, it also contains some awful baby screams in the middle of the song. If there’s one effect I hate, it’s baby screams. Fortunately the part with the baby screams doesn’t last long but it’s still fucking infuriating. Hell, the only BM band I’ve heard so far which has used the baby scream effect well is Gehenna on “A Witch is Born”. Funnily enough, “Dawna Siła” (another track with a keyboard solo, btw) begins with a riff that sounds just like one of the riffs from the Ventures song “Pipeline” that Anthrax covered on their “Penikufesin” EP. Haha, I certainly didn’t expect this album to give me any Anthrax flashbacks.

The lyrics to only three tracks have been printed in the booklet and all of these lyrics are in Polish. However, the three tracks in question are sung in English on the album?! Why print the lyrics in Polish if the respective tracks are sung in English? I think we need some solar wisdom to understand this.

AFAIK, one of the reasons this album was delayed a lot was that the guy who originally was supposed to sing on it died and the search for a replacement took a long time. Well, whoever is singing here does a good job as the vocals don’t differ practically at all from the Wolf’s Moon album: they’re rather grunted than screamed (no deep death metal grunts though) and occasionally taking on a bit of a shouty RAC style.