Saturna, hail from Barcelona, Spain and have been steadily making a name for themselves in underground circles by releasing a steady stream of high quality and extremely listenable albums since forming in 2010. Over the years the bands line up has changed but the bands commitment for creating strong melodic heavy rock has not, something that can be discovered by giving their latest album "Atlantis" a spin.
If you like your music gritty, a little stonerized but still hanker for old school elements like groove and melody then you may well have stumbled onto your new favourite band. Saturna are not a doom band neither are they what you could consider a stoner rock band, although they do harness aspects from both genres in their sound, Saturna are a "rock band" in the old tradition of the term, a band who can crunch out raucous riffs and pummeling rhythms with the best of 'em but can at the same time tug at your heart strings with the soulfulness and emotional gravitas of their compositions. From the chugging hard rock of opening track "Black Purple" to the heavy blues drenched closer "Distant Shores" there is not note wasted, a vocal thrown away or a beat misplaced as the band take you back to a time when trouser bottoms were a little wider and rock ruled the musical world. The fact that Saturna do this without falling into the trap of sounding "retro" or nostalgic is down to the freshness and vitality they bring to the table, the band serving up classic recipes laid out on a brand new tablecloth.
There are surprisingly very few albums that can truly be considered "all killer no filler", most releases will contain at least one or two songs that do not quite reach the mark of the other songs they are surrounded by but when one of these rare albums does appear, where every track is on a level playing field with its neighbours, then it is something to be savoured and lauded. Saturna's latest opus "Atlantis" is one such album, the Spanish four piece combo have excelled themselves and created one of the "must have" releases of 2019.
Check it out ….
© 2019 Frazer Jones
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