This time I'm presenting an album that I discovered by chance while on vacation in Tenerife at the local record store called Rock Shop in Santa Cruz, a remarkable little store by the way. It's about the Canadian Soulstorm, more precisely from Toronto, who celebrate an absolutely outstanding mixture of industrial and death metal on their debut album from 1992 called “Darkness visible”, so a band member wore Grave shirts in band photos. Of course, Pitch Shifter and Godflesh and the early Fear Factory were the main inspiration here, but the band around mastermind, guitarist, bassist and singer Nick Sagias really didn't have to hide behind their quality and compositional skills in any way. However, because of the vocals, the pendulum often swings more in the direction of death metal, although there are also one or two clean vocal parts that bring back memories of Fear Factory. As far as the driving groove and the partly mechanical coldness and sterility are concerned, Soulstorm were at the absolute top level. In fact, looking at the CD artwork brought back memories of advertisements in the German Rock Hard magazine, which I had long since forgotten. The debut was released via Metal Blade Records, the follow-up album was released on a smaller label. The band broke up in 1999, only to reunite in 2006 with a different line-up. In 2012, they released one last, equally great album on their own before the band finally called it a day in 2016. Nick Sagias, who was also briefly active as a live bassist with Dutch band Pestilence in the 90s, is now active as a vocalist and bassist in Tribe Of Pazuzu, with John McEntee from Incantation (read an interview with John here) and Flo Mounier, known from Cryptopsy, Nader Sadek and Vltimas, among others. Anyone who knows what to do with the description of a groovy, mid-tempo mixture of industrial and death metal and likes the influences mentioned above should definitely grab this! By the way, "Darkness visible" was re-released in 2012 by the band itself, with an additional previously unreleased song from the time of the album and the first demo that features alternative versions of some of the album's tracks.
