Year: 2026
Label: In Illo Tempore/Gladivs Records
Australian Sun Vessel have renewed themselves on each album. Where debut Etched In Eternity (2023) was a pretty typical fare with understated vocals and acoustic guitar, 2024’s A Seed Fallen To Earth (review) saw the one-man project considerably flesh out its sound with more prominent synthesizers. The sophomore album saw Sun Vessel really start realizing their potential.
The development continues on this, Sun Vessel’s third album. Even more than its predecessor, it boldly strays away from cookie cutter interpretations of neofolk, daring to explore different musical soundscapes. But, at the same time, it steadfastly refuses to abandon its roots and remains easy to categorize as a neofolk album.
The two first tracks hammer in just how much Sun Vessel have expanded their horizons. Strike At The Very Heart, featuring German Atlantean Blood, with its minimalistic dark ambient soundscapes serves as an intro to the album. After it, Our Place In The Heavens is built entirely around a new age-y arpeggiated synth melody – it is only the understated vocals that identify this as Sun Vessel. Both of these remind me of the more electronic and experimental material Death In June put out in the 80’s.
Third track The Last Refuge assuages any fears that Sun Vessel would have forsaken their past sound. Its acoustic guitar and harmonious synth layers are just about as traditionally neofolk as you can get. Most of the remainder of the album is closer to this more familiar Sun Vessel sound that the experimentalism of the album’s opening. Although, as the decidedly synthetic drump loop on the brilliant Culture Bearer proves, Sun Vessel isn’t afraid to experiment a bit.
Atmospherically and lyrically Sun Vessel remain true to their earlier output. The strongest emotion on the album is melancholy, a sadness for a world passing into the darkness of banality. The lyrics deal with the search for purpose, truth and freedom, distaste with the lack of elevated spirit in modernity, and the importance of tradition. Aforementioned Culture Bearer takes the Evolian concept of carrying the torch across the abyss of the Kali Yuga and turns it into a powerful exhortation to everyone who still carries a fragment of tradition within.
These are, of course, rather archetypal themes within neofolk. Some might deride Sun Vessel for lack of originality. However, traditionalist philosophers have suggested that the true creative impulse isn’t about creating something unique on the material plane, but to channel perennial, transcendent truth and beauty. There is an implicit (and sometimes explicit) understanding of this woven into the quintessence of neofolk, which renders the search for originality as an end in itself pointless within the genre.
In other words: when the artist manages to forge a personal relationship with these archetypal themes – as Sun Vessel proves to have done on Destruction’s New Battledress – there’s no need for self-serving and misguided originality.
Destruction’s New Battledress is without a doubt Sun Vessel’s most mature and complete release to date. I would also say their best, although I can understand if someone prefers the straighter neofolk of A Seed Fallen To Earth over this.
On Destruction’s New Battledress, Sun Vessel remain, on one hand, true to their core sound and the traditions of neofolk. On the other, they embrace a more experimental style, and boldly expand their musical horizons. These two superficially opposite currents create a fruitful friction on the album, where musical traditionalism and open-mindedness bolster each other. Regardless of whether one likes this or one of the previous albums most, one thing is undeniable: Sun Vessel are with each release defining their own spot within neofolk ever more confidently.
Only Death Is Real 