Let the Stars Fall and the Kingdom Come

If you like your black metal to be the product of someone clearly possessed by demons, or in need of mental health intervention, then Parnassus is for you. We had one-man black metal bands in the 90s before they become the hipster favourite of 2013. All of Soderlund's projects just have that ineffable off-ness that's hard to specify. It's just an otherworldly uncanniness making for an extra vibe on Let the Stars Fall and the Kingdom Come.

The cover art is half-orgy, half-torment. The music is half Baroque, half raw, dismal Scandinaivian blackness. Parnassus isn't even Soderlund's extreme project, it's where he puts all his slightly more melodic material. This actually has the effect of making Parnassus even creepier. Credit to him though, all the songs on ...Stars Fall... are really compelling, haunted, freezing cold, and full of mystery. You know the drums will be fast or faster, and the riffs epic and sometimes hissy and painful. The orchestration is excellent throughout ...Stars Fall... and contrasts nicely with all Soderlund's demented shrieking. No lyrics were printed for Let the Stars Fall and the Kingdom Come, and for legal reasons and reasons of the meditative quality that non-userfriendly black metal possesses, it actually adds to the thrill of listening to an album which despite having lots of tempo changes and heaps of melodies is just innately fucked-up enough to be pretty uncomfortable.

It's quite hard to work out what happened to Soderlund as a child or teenager, The Hate I Have for Mankind being a little similar to Dark Funeral or Mactatus, but with Soderlund's added flair for transplanting church music and turning it the wrong way around. There's a religious grandiosity about ...Stars Fall... that makes it sound even more transgressive. Looking to the positives, the songs on ...Stars Fall... are all very consistent, have a signature sound, have excellently constructed drum patterns, sounding like played drums not programmed, even though they are, and the riffs are all hypnotic and aggressive, and the orchestration is excellent all the way. The bass is a bit lost in all the ornate chaos, but that was the order of the 90s.

With songs like Rape This Mortal Earth, and Crush the Grape of Tellus, you know what Soderlund is about. Lots of Satanism, lots of eerie melodies, and ultimately an album of really extreme outsider's music. All Soderlund's music is dangerous and trippy, but Parnassus is his melodic project so as an introduction, it's a bit less off-putting than say Octinomos. Listen at your own risk, it's not pleasant, even the orchestrations, but it is a great example of one-man black metal, and is curious in a really morbid way.

All the songs on ...Stars Fall... follow a similar ambience, and the album itself is more of an overall emotional experience than a bunch of individual tracks where you might like a few more than others. The first track, Introduction is really unsettling despite being a gentler aria, and later on, Turn All Earth to Ashes is extra-Soderlund, but there are no weak tracks on ...Stars Fall... The man and his music are so bound up it's like looking into someone's soul. Very personal music, and let's, face it, the keyboard melody on Cling to Your Lives as I End Them, is one for the ages.

You can try Puissance for almost un-psychotic Soderlund, but not really, and you can skip the cathedral mysticism of Parnassus, and go straight for Octinomos if you want relentless raw black metal. Parnassus is Soderlund's best project because it blends raw black metal riffs, menacing drum machine abuse, and exceptional orchestration, even though it's not precisely a halfway house between his other two main projects. It's a little hard to rectify, but as a mix of extremes, Let the Stars Fall and the Kingdome Come is pretty successful, and worth digging out. Just beware the creepiness factor.