Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet – II (Review)

This is the second album from Swedish instrumental post-metal band Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet.

If you have 44 minutes to kill and you want to spend that time being taken away from your otherwise dreary existence, then Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet’s latest release is a good way of achieving this.

Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet paint with a broad canvas on II, crafting large, spacious soundscapes that take the listener on a journey. Ultimately it’s this latter thing that any band like this has to do for me; with this kind of music I’m looking to be taken out of the real world and shown sights that I wouldn’t normally see. Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet manage to achieve this with confidence on II.

The music is full of resplendent melodies and emotive musical hooks. As well as a bucketload of the lighter, reflective passages that you’d expect for an album of this ilk, I very much like that there are a lot of more energetic sections full of tasty riffs and attitude.

Strings enhance the core instruments at key moments, adding a further engaging delicacy to the band’s creations. When juxtaposed against the heavier, faster sections, it works exceptionally well, (Storm is a perfect example of this, and a wonderfully realised evocation of the song’s namesake in musical form).

Mixing post-rock and post-metal with progressive rock/metal naturally and easily, this is melodic and highly engaging music that manages to have a kick to it that a lot of instrumental bands lack.

An impressive and rewarding listen.