REVIEWS:
My brother once said "Schaliach is not a band; it was and idea between two guys in Norway." This is quite true. There two guys, Ole and Peter, who sat down, wrote a few songs for an album, released it, and I think they came back later with "Purple Filter," which is not on their album, but rather on some compilation. I've heard the song, and it sucks. They completely changed their style between '96 and whenever "Purple Filter" was released. For this reason, if they should put out another album I'm not entirely sure I would go through the trouble of getting it. Their actual music is Christian Death Metal, or "Life Metal," depending on who you ask. To me they're just fantastic melodic death metal, similar in style to Edge of Sanity and Paramaecium. I'd probably say that they have less in the way of art and progressive influences, though their songs are still fairly long, and they are certainly not thrash/death metal. You know what, I'll just review their album and hopefully you'll hunt it down and decide for yourself what their exact style is.
--Robert Grazer
Post your comments about Schaliach
(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
For the first few months after I got this album I thought it was the best ever. Never before had I heard such and amazing blend of melody and emotion and I was convinced that this was it. My opinions have changed some over time from considering this to be absolute perfection, in fact even to point where I was completely ignoring its existence for a few months until just a little while ago. A couple weeks ago I took it out again and remembered why I used to love it. Not that I don't anymore; it's probably my third favorite death metal album, a step below Within The Ancient Forest and Crimson. But it's no longer something I would put in my top ten or twenty albums. Just shows you how things can change.
I became aware of Schaliach when I had a tape recording a late night underground metal show, and the DJ starts saying that he brought in this CD from his home and then plays a cut off of it called "A Whisper From Heaven." The song was instrumental, but beautiful and brilliant. Time passed and I eventually made the decision to buy the album, based on this one song alone. I gathered some information about it, did a little hunting and ended up with a used copy for $15. Now I'll talk about the actual song in a sec, but since "A Whisper From Heaven" was instrumental, I actually didn't know that this was a death metal release. I had gotten into Paramaecium just a short time before this, so I was already a fan of the slower melodic doom metal, but the vocals here were a lot less extreme than Tompkins' on Exhumed Of The Earth (my only Paramaecium album at the time). I kept comparing Schaliach to the Australian death metal masters (I learned of Edge of Sanity later), but was still slightly surprised to discover that this was doom.
But enough of my boring history here's was you need to know about the album itself: It rules. There are eight songs on here, each one a little masterpiece in its own special way. Tons of great riffs and solos are everywhere, a few epics, a couple shorter songs; it's all you need. The biggest epic on the album is "A Father's Mourning," which is around nine minutes long. It's also the only place where clean vocals dominate the song. Perhaps it's a tad overdramatic, but the great music makes up for it. The lyrics on the album are just alright, nothing too memorable, yet fortunately nothing is especially bad. They don't make me laugh, but don't annoy me to death either. The opening "The Last Creed" has the best, with some very interesting topics and memorable lines.
It's the three instrumentals, though, that make me love this album so much. In the lyrics sheet there is a quick explanation of what the message of each instrumental is, and you can hear the messages very well in each instrumental. The first, "In Memorium," is just a bit over two minutes, but the acoustic guitar melody is beautiful beyond words. The song is dedicated to babies who were aborted, and with its gentle mood it clearly delivers the message. The second is the aforementioned "A Whisper From Heaven," representing, well, a whisper from heaven. The calling of God. It's heavier than "In Memorium," and most of it is a long guitar solo (with some awesome rhythm guitar work) and it comes off as no less than perfect. Come to think of it, in the world of heavy metal instrumentals the only better ones I can think of are Metallica's brilliant "The Call Of Ktulu" and this album's seventh track.
The track is called "Coming Of The Dawn," and the message in the lyrics sheet state that it's about the second coming, and the song itself, while short, has got to be one of the most breathtakingly dramatic pieces of music I have ever heard. The melody is simple, first played by a piano, and then, from what seems like nowhere, violins change the song into a heavier reprise of the same melody. I can't really describe the song beyond that, because there is only so much words can say about a song. "Coming Of The Dawn" is one of those very few songs that's impact cannot be fully described in any other way than hearing it. So, even if you couldn't care less about Sonrise itself, get yourself an mp3 of this song and you will not regret it.
I guess that's all I have to say about Sonrise. It's a masterpiece, and you should take some time to go look for it. Look long enough and you should be able to find it in some form or another. It's easier to get into than some of the more epic and artsy (and superior) death metal albums out there, and it's one of the best underground albums of the nineties.
Post your comments / reviews for this album