Syn Ze Sase Tri – Zăul moș (Code666)
Wednesday, 6th September 2017
Translated as “I am with triple-six,” Romania’s Syn Ze Sase Tri is led by former Negură Bunget guitarist Corb, who was only in the band for a hot-minute from 2009 to 2010. The man’s stint in Transylvania’s leading black metal export gives little idea as to how Syn Ze Sase Tri operates; the two bands couldn’t be further apart. (Well, let’s not get too carried away.) Playing a brand of partly pompous, surely overblown symphonic metal, Syn Ze Sase Tri draw instant comparisons to Bal-Sagoth, a band who virtually wrote the rulebook on this stuff. On their fourth LP Zăul moș, Syn Ze Sase Tri have managed to create an album every bit as stifling as suggested.
There’s a preponderance of ideas and keyboard patches here, literally flying from all directions. The songs, in turn, have no shape nor form, just a cascade of high-action, high-wire moments all crammed together. The Romanian language is no barrier, for clean vocals, albeit, highly-animated ones, happen at random, like on the title track. Aside from that, you’ll get stuffy songs that are trying to become epic jaunts, like “Tărîmu de lumină” and “Urzeala ceriului,” neither of which display restrain or the notion that it’s not a bad idea for vocals to pipe down a bit so instrumentation can take hold.
Sure, the opening bits of “Plecăciune zăului” provide perhaps the only moments of worth, as a series of glimmering guitar riffs and delicate keyboard touches give way to female clean vocals. The rest of the time you’re wondering how Syn Ze Sase Tri was able to turn Zăul moș into such a cluster-F of a listen. Sonic overload all the way.
