Artist: Saor
Country: United Kingdom
Label: Season Of Mist
Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD
Year: 2025
Although ‘Origins’ ended up rather high on my Album Of The Year-list, I had difficulties properly wrapping my head around this follow-up that was released in the earlier months of 2025. For one reason or another ‘Amidst The Ruins’ didn’t click and I didn’t feel the urge to return to it and try again. But, as is often the case, sometimes I just need to put an album way for a good while and just start all over again. Which was what I did, I simply stopped trying or thinking, and picked it up only recently, a good few months later. And, guess what, this time it worked out much better.
Yet, I can still see why this latest album wasn’t an instant hit for me. While the proportion of Black Metal has not necessarily changed, the emphasis seems to have been shifted more towards the folky bits. Again, folky melodies and the grand, nature-inspired orchestrations have always been the very core of Saor, but actually it always served the Black Metal songs, so that the result was still Atmospheric/Folk Black Metal. This time around, however, it feels like the actual song structures itself have been moulded on the way old traditional and folk songs were composed.
So, with the structure of folk songs taking centre stage, it gives the music a slightly different twist and underscores the band’s trademark melodicism and unbeatable sense for folkish elements even more. It also shows that Andrew Marschall’s vision as well as song craftsmanship is still expanding and deepening. Whether that also means that the music or albums are getting better, is something that is worth a debate. Although I came to enjoy ‘Amidst The Ruins’ quite a bit I don’t think it lives up to the expectations built up with the previous Saor albums, with ‘Guardians’ (2016) and ‘Origins’ (2022) in particular.
Folk-inspired Black Metal seems to be more popular now than ever before, not in the least because of bands like Blackbraid and a whole lot of other who are all inspired by their indigenous origins, so in a way Saor’s rise to stardom might not yet have ended. But, even if there’s no reason to discard ‘Amidst The Ruins’, I can’t quite shake the feeling that Saor is increasingly becoming something more reminiscent of a mishmash of Loreena McKennit and Hagalaz’ Runedance with a dash of Black Metal than the other way around. Whether that is a good or a bad thing, that is up to you.
