Samael
Era One

March 2006
Released: 2006, Century Media
Rating: 2.5/5
Reviewer: Arto Lehtinen

THE ERA ONE is quite an un-expectional release in the Samael discography, the album was obviously recorded and done on purpose to conclude all deal obligations with Century Media. As a matter of fact, this ERA ONE double album was ready in 2002/2003, but wasn’t put out until now.



Disc one is pure electronic music with Vorpha growling with his typical and haunting style. The whole first disc is pure techno stuff programmed by Xy. It has to be admitted Xy is a real wizard as for creating cool sounding techno/electro beats. It is a wonder that he hasn’t teamed up with some Swiss or German electro or dance chart monsters to make some quick money. Or then he could have formed a side project in the same way like Peter has done with PAIN to capture the dance charts. At least “Sounds Of Galaxies” would have been a good choice for dance charts. Especially that one includes nice beats. However the rest of the stuff on the first disc is basically the same techno oriented programmed stuff. The second disc doesn’t make any exception compared to the first disc, apart from there is no Vorph doing vocals. Basically the second disc is demonstration of skills by Xy to do the programming.



Fortunately this kind of techno style remained Samael’s new approach. REIGN OF LIGHT followed the more traditional apocalyptic blackish techno metal style.