High Priest of Saturn
High Priest of Saturn

The debut album of this female fronted band from Norway consists of two lengthy tracks, two of them being just one minute under the ten minute mark and the other two surpassing it. “Only 4 songs in a debut release?” you may wonder. Believe me, there is nothing I would enjoy more than to listen as many more songs possible from them, but High Priest of Saturn manage to convey their message to you just fine with these four songs. Although all four of them are so lengthy and include only three or four riffs, they don’t become dull at any point and manage to maintain the listener’s interest intact until the end. That is a result of the combination of two elements, a) the use of guitars with fuzz just as heavy so it can be categorized under the very broad genre of stoner but not too heavy and thus tiresome to the ear if heard for many minutes, as it unfortunately is the case with some of the more extreme bands of the sludge/stoner scene and b) the ace up their sleeve which is the genius use of the organ, a keyboard instrument with notable sound mostly used in churches. They are High Priests after all.

Placed cleverly by Merethe Heggset underneath the guitar/bass sound on every track, the organ manages to provide a haunting sensation. It’s not eerie or depressing though, it’s more like hauntingly graceful, as if it were the soundtrack to a beautiful nightmare. Whether it sounds sinister (like in the astonishing “Crawling King Snake”) or magical (like in “On Mayda Insula”) or just complementing the rest of the instruments, it turns every song into a dark ritual, a blackened version of a Christian church mass. Merethe’s voice also adds up to that feeling. It is melodic, it is strange, it is always distant yet so close, like a voice from a dream or another dimension. Every word that she speaks seems like an invocation, an invocation of dark beings from another world or the darkness inside you, you be the judge of that. The structure off the songs is also really clever and in perfect harmony with the feeling the band is trying to convey to the listener. They start with a slow and/or calm riff, maybe with a change of ambient riffs in the middle part of the song

slowly escalating to an ecstatic dance of heavier or faster doom riffs ( “On Mayda Insula” having one of the most powerful doom riffs I’ve ever heard towards the end of the song), and reaching their peak with magnificent, orgasmic solos that turn each song into a trip during which you have forgotten where you started from and where you were going and the only thing you can do is enjoy that specific moment of the song.

To sum up, I love bands that justify their name and every song of this album could be sung from a High Priest and his flock around an altar during a secret underground cult mass. “High Priest of Saturn” is a spacey, hauntingly beautiful debut whose sound can only be described as addictive. If, in the end, you decide to listen to this release I can only offer you this warning: Prepare to be amazed, prepare to be addicted.