With its final single before its new album, the melancholia-driven mid-tempo track "But Today", Soror Dolorosa presents a different facet of Mond. Illuminated by a visualiser, this song channels classic wave sounds into an expression of sorrow and regret. "But Today" is taken from the French post-punk gothic rockers' approaching full-length Mond (the German word for 'Moon') due on 4 October through Prophecy Productions.
Soror Dolorosa's mastermind, Andy Julia, writes: "The last advance single 'But Today' is also the final song on our new album and one of my favorites so far. Creating the different phases of the song was the result of a magnificent teamwork. It gave me particularly great pleasure to get my vocals and the choirs into harmony with the keyboards that you can hear in the chorus. This might well be our most progressive track on Mond that also has the most complex structure. We felt thrilled when we noticed that the complexity was not mitigating the efficacy of the groove and the brilliance of harmonies. Our producer James Kent told us: 'This reminds me of the Fields Of The Nephilim, what a smash!' All of us in the band were rather thinking about Depeche Mode when we designed the sound and that particular tone of the guitar riffs. I could hardly visualise this song more efficiently than by unveiling the artistic process behind the creation of the cover artwork for Mond that was inspired by my muse. At the beginning of the shooting we had this idea of creating a mysterious character like the myth of the Ancient Greek seer Pythia. Therefore, we began to work with poses of a veiled lady who utters prophecies while having divine visions in a state of trance. Yet with the passing of each hour, the spirit of the moon goddess came over us and Angélique's naked body finally reflected the light of the stars that are falling apart somewhere between the flame of the sun and the cold nocturnal light of the moon in a perfect symbiosis".
The classic dark post-punk and wave elements are all there, and so is the overwhelming enticement to let your feet move in an ecstatic dance under the eponymous moon. Yet Soror Dolorosa is no peddler of stale snake oil nostalgia. The French band has updated the classic feel with a massive sound fitting for the new millennium. Mix and mastering of Mond have been successfully entrusted to Perturbator's mastermind James Kent, who has polished this epic album with a lush vibrant power and ethereal coldness.
Lyrically, Soror Dolorosa remains firmly on the path it has wandered from the start - when the band was originally founded in Toulouse in 2001 and finally emerged with the Severance EP in 2009. The inspiration has again, in part, come from poets and writers such as William Blake and Edgar Alan Poe. The romantic and cathartic emotional landscapes are still at the heart of the band.
With Mond, Soror Dolorosa is reaching far out of the solar sphere and into deep outer space where the musical past and future become entwined to create an exciting new chapter in the band's evolution.
Additional info and the two previously released singles/videos are HERE. Link