Sol Invictus - Lex Talionis (1989)    

Review:
Much of this album could just be described in terms of post-punk with folk influences, from the opening track Blood And Wine which is based on a simple, repeating pattern of piano notes (which comes back as a reprise in closer Wine and Blood) and the title track which follows it becomes evident that this is going to be an album based around plenty of gloomy, repetitive bass hooks. These appear in many of the songs and anchor the rest of the compositions well, which include some electronic noise influences, luscious acoustic guitars, thumping drum machines, basically what you would expect from a new wave group jamming with some guy on an acoustic guitar. Most of the songs are similar in tone, rather drawn out, morose sounding compositions with Wakeford's lyrics delivered in his low, husky voice which is almost certainly a love it or hate it kind of affair (this would be the case with most neofolk singers it would seem). The lyrics are very well written, from the aforementioned title track and its chorus ("The world is full of gods and beasts"), to Black Easter ("Hear the chants of old powers, the weak fall on their swords/Nature is above all morals, destiny a shameless whore"), to Amongst The Ruins ("I'll meet you where the moonlight falls/I'll meet you where the statues stand/I'll meet you beneath the falling walls/We await the gods to show their hand amongst the ruins") Lex Talionis is concerned with typical esoteric neofolk themes and has that distinct touch of eerie mysticism in delivery that just makes this side of it perfect. Lex Talionis is an essential album from a period in the British neofolk scene where great things were just starting to happen for the genre, when Current 93 and Death In June were starting to focus their songwriting into something much more potent then the earlier hit and miss ambient and post-punk experiments would suggest these groups were capable of. Sol Invictus are by no means a third wheel however, Lex Talionis proving that Tony Wakeford's act had a lot of potential with their debut studio LP being one exceptionally strong recording. The group went on to release many more LP's over the years, all of which are worth checking out and generally got better and better (around the later part of the 90's was arguably their peak. — sputnikmusic



Track List:
01 Blood And Wine
02 Lex Talionis
03 Black Easter
04 Kneel To The Cross
05 The Ruins
06 Tooth And Claw
07 Blood Against Gold
08 Fields
09 Abattoirs Of Love
10 Heroes Day
11 Rex Talionis
12 Wine And Blood
13 Black Easter (live) - bonus


Media Report:
Genre: neofolk
Country: England, UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


Note: If you like the music, support the artist