Striborg — Southwest Passage

‘Southwest Passage’ follows the trend of recent Stirborg albums in offering shorter, often more straight forward metallic, rock & blackly punked songs, with a distinctive wonky gothic edge. But don’t panic Sin Nanna hasn’t gone all grim ‘n’ roll on us or for that matter all fist shaking 80’s retro metallic either- this is still squarely a Stirborg album with all the bleak, wonky & blacked wonder we’ve come to expect from Sin Nanna.

On offer here are six tracks in all which stretch between three to near on nine minutes, but most of the tracks fall around the six to seven minute mark. Nearly all of the tracks here have as their focal point guitar/ riff  elements with Sin Nanna bleak scream & rant next in the mix followed by wonky, wavering bass lines, next to the crude grave yard gates drums, then lastly the odd hints of keyboard grimness, and the odd weave of watery & sinister vibe like elements . There are no purely atmospheric & instrumental keyboard tracks here as we’ve had on most  the past albums & this is certainly a more meatier & guitar based album with the tracks often been fairly mid-pace to going towards almost up beat, through they still often dip into more melancholic & plain suicidal dirges of guitar, bass & keyboards. 

The songs seem a lot saner, more structured & for want of a better word less wondering; that in self is mildly disappointing as you don’t find as many bizarre sonic left turns or grim deviations as in the past- but at the end of the day we can’t expect any artist to keep doing the same thing again & again. There has to be growth & development with-in their sound & there certainly is that here. The only real surprise here is the last track ‘Requiem For a Lonely Ghost’ which is built from acoustic guitars, violin & an ultra grim running down carnival like pump organ. It’s a great sombre, slow & bobbing track which nicely ends the album on a bleak note; the track sort of brings to mind what you might hear as a funeral procession for a  bizarre travelling shows dead companion.

‘Southwest Passage’ is another grimly creative & distinctive slice of black metal from Sin Nanna. Sure the songs are more straight- forward & often approachable in there make-up, but he’s still not lost his dark allure & that one off ability to summon up a dark heady & unequal atmosphere.