CoC : Die Sonne Satans - Sigillo : Review

Die Sonne Satans - _Sigillo_
(Sadisque, 1996)
by: Andrew Lewandowski (7 out of 10)

One of the less prolific artists in the ambient genre, _Sigillo_ is a collection of the better material recorded over the course of the band's five-year history. Even though this is a collection of 13 tracks usurped from several different sources, DSS avoid incoherence, as they rarely stray from a typical dark ambient sound. As in many of the better minimalist ambient albums exploring metaphysical soundscapes, choral and sacred elements work at enthralling the listener. While effective at producing a sonic realm segregated from reality, this provides nothing that, say, Archon Satani and Raison d'etre have not already experimented in. Besides unoriginality, a larger problem manifests in confining song structures. Few tracks propagate beyond five minutes, thus DSS are rarely capable of exploring dynamic, or meditative, sounds within a singular track. Although, the variety of sounds explored by DSS are more numerous than on most ambient albums, and the problem is rectified once each song is viewed as a faceless entity amidst a socialist machine than as a free-thinking individual.

(article published 9/4/1997)