review: Sölicitör

Sölicitör

Spectral Devastation

Gates of Hell Records

24 April 2020

Many are the obsessions with speed. The grind freaks often rely on short bursts of chaotic speed, while some death metal mutants frequently go full blast with precision, and thrash bands love the mosh riffs. These Seattle area rockers love the speed, too, but for them it is a vehicle for their traditional, classic-style heavy metal, a leaner, meaner, focused sound of galloping and fast riffs, shredding and heroic-villainous singing. The music is not extreme metal, but the pace is intense enough that dissenters of the extreme might just find these songs interesting, and possibly different from the usual, less intense style of the golden oldies. Drums, bass, guitars, microphone. Turn them on, and just pounce! Sölicitör sounds like they wake up to eat metal for breakfast, lunch and dinner and go to sleep thinking about the next headbanging tune that they will write. They are metal and sing about metal in a very proud way. Maybe living in a place like Seattle makes the misfits even more devoted to their cause while they are surrounded by a famous fish market, water water water everywhere, coffee shops galore, and a Space Needle that points accusingly at the metal bands, asking, “Do you dare to be metal in this town? in this town?!”

How to make classic-style songs in 2020 that rock with the classics and with the fans of the contemporaries? How to make songs interesting while generally keeping the songs very uptempo? These are the questions that the Washington state band seeks to answer. Do bands that play fast all the time paint themselves into a corner?! Not if you’re into music that works like adrenaline! Who needs caffeine when you have Sölicitör music to jolt you out of your fatigue?! Their mission is clear and they have their marching orders: rock! It was written long ago:

We didn't come for their sympathy

We didn't come for their soul

We didn't come for their bigotry

We didn't come for their gold

We never said we were perfect

We'll lay it on the line

They can stick their censorship

Where the sun don't shine

We came here to rock!

Sölicitör did not write those lyrics, Saxon did, but the goal is the same, metal, glory and fame, working to make metal great again, whether in Britain or in the Seattle rain for the fanatics of fast, headbanging and shredding and wailing. Sölicitör came here to rock.

solicitor-speedmetal.bandcamp.com/releases