From Hollywood to Melbourne and from soul to pop and from blues to metal, Solar Flare (in different forms) seems to be a quite popular name among artists. I dug till China and back, but it was kind of “mission impossible” to find anything about this particular Solar Flare. Finally I get some help from the Domino Media Agency and about this “Swiss doom conspiracy”.
Switzerland already delivered several exciting products this year, and the land of 26 cantons seems to be very resourceful also in metal. Rocal was formed in 2006 in Geneva, Switzerland and last year their released their fifth record, “HELIOGABALUS” – which is a single 70 minutes monolithic piece. Solar Flare is a side-project from Impure Wilhemina formed also in Geneva by Michael Schindl (Guitar, vocals), David Schindl (Drums), Thierry Baertschiger (Guitar) and Didier Baertschiger (Bass) in 1998. In 2006, the band suffered several line-up changes: David and Thierry leaved Geneva, and were replaced by Mario Togni (drums) and Alexandre Müller (guitar).
This collaborative split is exclusively available on Call of Ror label’s e-shop and for entire streaming on SoundCloud.
The guys locked themselves for 3 days in a humid basement (actually one of the band’s practice room ) to write and record a collaborative track sounding as heavy as it could be with 2 basses, 3 guitars, supported by drums and vocals from the Mordor. All has been mastered again by Raph Bovey who produced HLGBLS.
As concept and guideline, they found inspiration in the poem “La Ronde sous la Cloche”, taken from the book “Gaspard de la Nuit” and written by the french poet Aloysius Bertrand… although the legend says that this book was probably written by the devil himself. His text drags you into a world between nightmare, hallucination and darkness which we tried to reproduce musically.
And this is a quite dark trip into the mysterious, sometimes quite scary unknown. The release is presented in a very limited handmade digifile CDr (only 200 copies) format featuring five tracks from Solar Flare and the collaborative song which is an over 21 minutes journey to hell and back.
We’re doomed.
Rocal – Official Site
Impure Wilhemina – Official Site
Rorcal vs. Solar Flare – Split on-line streaming @ SoundCloud
Call of Ror @ Blogspot
