1904 Era Vulgaris – Gnosis manages to be a furious, rapid and efficient black metal album, with interesting melodies, and a powerful approach to the genre, although expressively generic in several terms.
In a very detailed conjuncture of aspects, Gnosis is a regular album, not too bad, but also not a very good one. The fact that the sound is too plastered and stilted deeply affects the possibilities of a more expressive style, although the main elements of black metal are all there. In Gnosis you have exacerbated fury, a cautious dialogue of rhythms, a methodic alignment of melodies and interesting guitar lines. The heaviness of the album is a predominant element all the way through, but unfortunately, they were not successful in achieving genuine results. Not volatile as black metal should be, the songs in general sound the same. Interestingly, they remember a lot Borknagar – especially the album Quintessence –, but only the aggressive parts. Saille, on this particular album, feels like Borknagar all the way through, but sounds like a version completely deprived of its progressive and folk elements.
Despite these descriptions, I’m not saying that Saille is a bad band. They do have talent, an amazing technical proficiency and good songwriting skills. I only feel that they need urgently to develop more singularities in their music, because all tracks in Gnosis sound too similar. And I’m really not debating style here, because their style is really solid. Nevertheless, they do need to evolve to a more distilled and diluted sound, since they seem to be playing the same song over and over again.
Gnosis is a good album, but unfortunately, unsophisticated and suffering with a great deal of limitations. The album has maintained intact, though, it’s potential to please the more ardent and undemanding enthusiasts of the genre. In a more lackluster scenario, the album could be considered good and also satisfying. But I really stand out the necessity of improvement in several aspects, especially in what concerns the shape of the sound, and the development of a quest for more singular, meaningful and unique musical grounds.
Wagner