Solace: Peace And Disquiet
by Martin Popoff

New Jersey doom rockers Solace have unleashed Further, their first full-length album, out now on MeteorCity, following up an EP called Distance From Reality. To pull away from the over-hyped stoner rock tag, the band made sure to keep it dark, something symbolized by the album's creepy cover art.

"That was done by Wes Benscoter, who is actually an amazing artist," explains guitarist Tommy Southard. "You can check out his work at wesbenscoter.com. He's done a lot of work for other metal bands, mostly death metal bands and he was looking to branch out. And we were actually trying to do something anti-stoner, try to get away from the typical space ships and planets. We wanted to go with something a little more edgy and evil. I couldn't be more happy with the cover. He had this piece; it wasn't published in anything, nobody had ever used it, so we got lucky. And I think it really fits the album. It gives people a peek inside at that little bit of darkness we have in our songs."

Musically, the band seem to have picked up a bit of that Olde English vibe from Cathedral, a band Tommy and bassist Rob Hultz toured with in Atlantic recording act Godspeed, the two backing up the mighty Black Sabbath in Europe. And the songs are long. "I'm really proud of the song 'Angels Dreaming'. It's ten minutes long and I've heard from several different people who've commented on the length of our songs, and everybody has said to me 'I can't believe how long your songs are, yet they really flow, and before you realize it, ten minutes is over.' And with that one in particular, people have said it doesn't seem like it's ten minutes long, and I really take that as a compliment. It's not like dragging along and people are going 'oh my God when is this freaking going to end?' I'm just really happy with the construction of that song. It's just really heavy and slow and doomy and it moves, you know?"

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