Band:	Samael
Album:	Above
Style:	Electro industrial metal
Release date:	March 2009

01. Under One Flag
02. Virtual War
03. Polygames
04. Earth Country
05. Illumination
06. Black Hole
07. In There
08. Dark Side
09. God's Snake
10. On The Top Of It All

Vorph and Xy are not to be trusted. Samael's latest album Above is one with a history of disinformation, misdirection and outright lies. It all started off as a bloated concept of Gorillaz proportions with a virtual band called "Above" playing songs written for them by the Samael boys. Well, this was a lie. Moving on, Vorph then announced that it would be the missing link between Ceremony Of Opposites and Passage. Again, this was a lie. Finally, the band decided to play one of the new songs on their Winterfest tour and it turned out to sound similar, although a little darker, to Samael's most recent output. Guess what? This was also a lie. If this song does in fact appear on Above, it is completely unrecognizable to me.

This is because Above turned out to be a blindingly fast yet atmospheric black metal album with an industrial edge. Machine gun drums totally dominate this release, drowning behind them every other instrument including the vocals, which are delivered in an ice-cold cybernetic kind of crazy shriek. The bass booms underneath all of this, while the guitars and keyboards play quickly progressing riffs and vague atmospherics in the background, respectively. Unfortunately, all of this is completely unacceptable and totally inappropriate for any fan of the band. For those that enjoy Samael's recent output, this will be far too crazy, dark and fast. For old fans, Above will be too electronic, cleanly produced and fast. What a total misfire of an album this is.

OK, that's enough, now, in the last 4 sentences, I was lying. Above is in actuality a superb album that further cements Samael's position as the key innovators on the scene for the past 2 decades or so. It is completely inconsequential that upon first listen this album will most likely totally shatter your expectations since it will do so with such immense power and consistency that it is unlikely to be a disappointment. In fact, describing separate songs here is utterly pointless, they work well as single entities and even better as an album. This kind of fluid interplay between memorable melodic black metal riffs and blitzkrieg chaingun rhythmic intensity is rarely achieved.

Although they are a bunch of liars, with their latest release Samael proves that it still has what it takes to be the kind of band that convinces impressionable metalheads to come up with silly cosmos-themed Internet forum user names ending with the letters '-ack' or even '-as'...