Bölzer – Soma

Bölzer is a black/death metal band from Switzerland and they’re about to release their second EP called Soma on August 5th. Soma will be their third EP following up their 2013 EP entitled Aura.

Bölzer have yet to release a full length effort, but their EPs already show that they’re more than capable of producing captivating black metal spiced up with some death metal influences. The band stays true to its virtues on this EP, creating a dense, dark atmosphere full of dramatic and heavy black metal riffs.

Soma isn’t just an Aura 2.0, though. While Soma still features fast, wailing walls of guitars, the riffs on Aura really made you feel like you’d soar through the northern sky in a stormy, moonlit night. The riffs on Soma give a much more underground and barbaric vibe with twisted, more drawn out passages.

The vocals changed quite a lot compared to their first EP. The tracks now feature a lot more “spoken word” and KzR, as the vocalist calls himself, goes for a more guttural and deeper approach, giving his vocals a sense of grittiness. Additional to those changes, they now also have some deep, chanting choirs supporting in the backgrounds. Overall, the vocal delivery is much more layered and fleshed out in comparison to Aura, but I have to say that I, personally, preferred the maniacal, drawn out screams and long gasps for air on their first EP.

The length of the EP is also kind of a bummer, since they present us with only two tracks over the lenght of 18 minutes (Aura was three tracks over 22 minutes). The amount of “effective” music is actually even shorter, considering that the last few minutes on the second track are an kind of ambient, atmospheric outro.

Bölzer, nevertheless, present us some top notch black metal on this EP, that just leaves you craving for more and even though it wasn’t quite as strong as their Aura EP, which was one of my favorite releases of last year, this was a really enjoyable listen.

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