I first heard Sojourner at their debut North of the Wall pre-show in Glasgow in 2018, a band fresh to the scene but one that I could tell were on their way to the top of their game in a genre that was becoming oversaturated. I went for Saor but I left an even bigger fan of Sojourner. The show wasn't without it's flaws with too many members on stage and some technical issues but I have watched them closely ever since. That show was just after their second album, 'The Shadowed Road', which I picked up at the show and was floored by the technicality expressed so rarely by bands of their atmospheric black metal ilk. However, that's for another review, because fastforward two years and I finally got my hands on their highly anticipated album 'Premonitions'.

Right off the bat I felt like I was hearing what I had known that Sojourner could become. Huge production values finally take the band to a place that does justice to their sweeping mixture of atmospheric black metal, folk metal, melodic death metal, and on this album, doom metal. The guitars are bigger than ever, the drums are colossal gears driving the machine forward, the keys shine brighter than ever, and both vocalists are commanding and theatrical. It's not without a few flaws, but we'll get to those in a moment, though they're not enough to sour the experience.

First, the good and the great: the instrumentation is phenomenal, with guitars sounding bigger and more vibrant than ever, and pushing the evolution of the band forward into territories that they hadn't previous explored particularly with the doom moments. The piano and keys are varied and help carry the weight of the metal by providing a softer dynamic. Premonitions feels like a band that has perfected their songwriting in a genre that all too often becomes stale in repetition and redundant in carbon copy songwriting (less repetitive than genremates Saor but without veering off into prog aimlessness). Crespo's vocals are more varied than ever, gone are his slightly one-note deliveries in favor of a much more varied and powerful three-pronged attack of lows, mid range, and highs. Bray's vocals are ethereal and at certain moments benefit the songs enormously, such as in the ballad 'Talas'. The drumming is particularly focused on this record too, having a power and focus that helps drive the songs along.

Moving on to the slightly lesser aspects of the album that kept this from being a perfect score for me: the female vocals, while lovely and charming in their delivery, feel a little off key at times and occasionally feel as if they were an afterthought that were tacked on and forced to fit sections didn't need to be on. This isn't to say they are bad, just not as powerful as you would hope for the style. The beautiful ballad 'Talas' is an example of where they shine though, and is start to finish a beautiful and highly emotional track. The other aspect that falls flat at times is the tin whistle, which was an increasingly overly-exploited trope for Sojourner and while it is undeniably beautiful I'm glad they did dial it back this time, because the final and most powerful track on the album, 'The Event Horizon' benefits hugely from pulling a surprise punch of having no tin whistle at all.

Despite these minor gripes this album is just front-to-back a stunning achievement by the band and an album that has in part spurred me to pick up my reviews again for the first time in nearly 15 years.

Best tracks: 'Fatal Frame', 'The Event Horizon', 'Eulogy for the Lost', and 'Talas' are particular highlights but the whole album shines really!

Worst tracks: 'Atonement' is really the only point of the album that felt uninspired to me, it's not a bad song but it plods at times and the clean vocals feel incredibly forced...and, as hesitant as I am to say this as I love the lyrical content of the album as a whole, the lyrics sound like terrible NPC dialogue from a badly translated game.

Sojourner is an international epic black metal project that has recently been getting a lot of buzz on the back of their first 2 albums and their two singers, Emilio Crespo and Chloe Bray and in 2020 they return with their third LP; “Premonitions”, released via Napalm Records.

As I mentioned, Sojourner have been catching a lot of people’s attention, their brand of atmospheric black metal with tinges of what many describe as “epic metal”; often found in subgenres like doom metal (in particular the style that heavily leans on big and slow riffs), power metal and the obvious, Bathory inspired style of Viking metal, this mix of atmosphere and grandiosity made Sojourner known and it served them very well, particularly in their sophomore release “The Shadowed Road”, and now that their playing in the big leads by signing to Napalm Records, the band for their third opus has decided to continue refining their style and taking full advantage of a more polished production, however, while the band continue showing off their skill in this particular style, and doing a good job at being a solid entry level band into black metal, in my opinion they seemed to have succumbed to the dreaded “sophomore slump” but in their third album.

The first major issue with this album is that the cleaner production and much bigger emphasis on the “epic” atmosphere, i.e. the band wanting the music to sound more operatic and grand, feels overworked and even gaudy in places, the album’s opener “The Monolith” gives some early 2000’s vibes of gothic metal akin to Nightwish and not in a favorable way. The other problem is that, while this band became known for heavily leaning on the atmospherics, in here they seem to double down on it, I personally really enjoy long and elaborated songs, hell, black metal thrives and is characterized for being atmospheric, but in here, because of the emphasis on the atmosphere being so symphonic and orchestrated, instead of the music washing over me and lulling me into a sense of tranquility, I often found myself just watching the runtime and when there was a song with more energy and punch like “The Apocalyptic Theater” (which is this album’s best song) I felt wanting the band to do more of this than the protracted songs in the rest of the album that sound more like symphonic black metal than atmospheric black metal, as the music is too flowery and operatic which doesn’t have a place for the darkness of black metal. Using fantasy RPG’s as a comparison, this band went from Dark Souls to World of Warcraft.

Finally, for a band that does classify as “epic atmospheric black metal” the music sounds very cheesy and overwrought in places, this is mostly because of the cleaner and more professional production. I will clarify that from a technical and instrumental standpoint the band does shine, the performances are top notch and when they succeed in their music sounding cinematic they soar, however the album tends to goes on this long stretches to create atmosphere but it ends up feeling more bloated than grand. In my opinion, this album feels like a retrogression on the band’s part, in the sense that now that they have the backing of a bigger label and access to better production, they sought to give themselves a rebirth of sorts, they closed the book on their first era (their first 2 albums) and tried to have a new beginning, and while they do shine in several places, it seems that their ambitions were just too much and went overboard.

Overall while Sojourner have still the potential and novelty to push on and make a name for themselves, this album is the band trying to prove themselves in a new field but unfortunately going through a lot of trial and error that they didn’t face when they first began. Not a bad album and certainly not without real talent and passion, but a mixed bag in my opinion, hopefully the band will succeed in ironing out their shortcomings for their next album.

Best songs: The Apocalyptic Theater, Fatal Frame, The Deluge

Written for www.metalbite.com