VELVET THUNDER

With apologies to all stargazers out there – Solace actually delivered their fifth studio album Fading Failing Ruin just after the summer solstice, and in time to celebrate the anniversary of their 30th year as a band (well… it’s been a hectic summer!). All the heaviness, experience, and obvious maturity of their songwriting across three decades is perfectly reflected in the seeming ease with which these master craftsmen hammer out one captivating and crushing track after the other.

Revolving around apocalyptic, infernal, and end-time themes that easily fit this day and age, Fading Failing Ruin nails the current global mood by taking a strong dose of inspiration from the earliest days of metal and blending it with contemporaryheaviness. A direct link goes back to 1996, when Solace rose from the ashes of Godspeed, who made their name on Headbanger’s Ball and Beavis & Butthead, appeared on the “Nativity in Black” tribute backing Bruce Dickinson, and toured with Cathedral and Black Sabbath. Emerging at the dawn of the internet and the burgeoning stoner rock scene, Solace were driven by hardcore-infused metal, captivating vocals, and a dark doom underbelly.

The New Jersey band hit the scene with their ferocious debut Further in 2000. Its tracks remain as contemporary and relevant as in those early days, and an extended and re-mastered 25th anniversary edition became an unplanned but much deserved tribute to brilliant yet tortured original vocalist Jason L., who had sadly passed away in January 2025.
The band nevertheless continued to build on a solid foundation of classic metal, early doom, and punk ethic into which the four-piece infused a healthy dose of hardcore fury and groovy, grinding sludge. Three years after the worldwide success of Further, they returned with the sophomore album 13 (2003), which highlighted the epic side of their songwriting. In the wake of this album, the band was invited twice to perform at the prestigious Roadburn Festival in 2006 and 2009. The shoremen returned with their highly praised third album A.D. in 2010. Despite the band’s growing acclaim, Solace took an informal hiatus to revamp their lineup, returning even stronger with full-length number four, The Brink, in 2019.

Solace have described their particular amalgamation of doom and heavy metal with hardcore elements as dirt metal, and more latterly simply as heavy rock (fair enough!) – while others have somewhat tongue-in-cheekily coined the phrase “shorecore”. Others file the New Jersey five-piece under stoner metal – and in truth, all these descriptions have and still fit the band to an extent. You can hear the confirmation of this in the album’s opening blast Spiral Will – I love that combination of sweetly melodic twin lead guitars underpinned by a mighty chord and bassline! Grungily heavy but simultaneously so tuneful, watch the fascinating video below!

Fettered to a Stone comes next, it gives singer Justin G the vehicle to give vent to the full range of his vocal capabilities. Some lovely bursts of lead licks punctuate the predominantly stoner vibe of the is little beast, I don’t know which player this is (and, actually, I’m sure both Tommy and Justin D are trading equal bursts here), the individuals in this band are vastly under-rated talents.

A God Changes His Plans is a brief but energetic chunk of punk-led stoner, it’s ok but until the solos towards the end it’s a bit derivative? And now for something completely different, as Monty Python once announced! Wrath’s Object (The Big Fall) is nearly 15 minutes of slowly building retro-rock, it reminded me of some of the earliest ramblings from Wishbone Ash, or Welsh band Man (1970’s Daughter of the Fireplace era). I really didn’t expect this, the gently developing epic that was unfurling in my lobes! After the almost imperceptible build-up it morphs into a full-blown homage (to my mind) to early Black Sabbath – and what a fine job they do, this is a timeless monster that deserves your full attention – I love the change of mood with around three minutes to go, accentuated with an absolute scorcher of a solo.

Culling The Herd is a short but sweet workout / shout-out around a riff, again reminiscent of early Sabbath, that has a lovely change (down) of gear halfway through, this bridge section is scarily like Ozzy in his pomp. Beyond Below and Malengine (The Scaffold) both take me into deep Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats territory, but always with that extra lead guitar beefing up the melody. Beyond Below still has that early Sabbathesque feel to it including that deep wind-down of pace and tone around the halfway mark, before launching back into to the original riff and topped with more searing guitar work – these guys really are at the top of their game. Malengine has a monster of a riff ground out in best Unlce Acid style, while again exploring that contrast of heaviness then a positive lightness of touch within the same riff. It’s clever stuff because it means you never get bored (as can often be the case with stoner material across a full album…). Anyway, a classic trademark of these guys is what happens at the mid-point of so many songs. Still the same riff, but a different arrangement, a pause for breath, a new working of the melody. Not having heard these guys before, I’m mightily impressed.

Every Day Is A Loaded Gun is relatively derivative of the band’s style, but what strikes you is the complete “oneness” of the guitars and bass – this is where the years of working together really shines through, welding a platfrom so solid you can have fun and float away above it at times. Justin G’s singing is particularly impressive, reminding me of a host of 70’s Greats somehow on this one. A slightly weird winding up section doesn’t detract form the overall fun here.

The songset is brought to a close with Ridden, all 10:24 of it. The first three minutes almost follow on from the previous track, then again we get a strong reminder of Sabbath in the mood-change, a rumbling crashing runaway riff in the best tradition of Tony Iommi with an Ozzy-like rant above it all – really quite striking. Add to this an extended chunk of twin-lead work-out on top of that oh-so-beefy rhythm section and you’re definitely getting your money’s worth of heavy, heavy rock! And we’re still only halfway through this beast, plenty of time to then revert to a pacey, monotonic Stoner work-out. Some great lyrics here – “what hell would you crawl through if you thought you could trade?; that broken part of you for something even you could not degrade” , followed by an absolute blaster of not one but two lead solos. And there’s still another two minutes worth of world-class lead licks that follow that, the two guitarists competing for ascendancy in this particular dark place! Simply excellent….and breath….

With Fading Failing Ruin, Solace have erected a new milestone of heavy, heavy rock that respects the very best heavy metal traditions from both sides of the Atlantic. Time to bang those heads! The album was recorded by Eric Rachel at Bulletproof Music Studio, Hazlet, NJ (US) & The Pussycat Club, Milford, NJ (US); Produced by Eric Rachel & Solace; Mix & mastering by Eric Rachel at Trax East, South River, NJ (US); Cover art & layout by Paul Vismar