Year: 2020
Total Time: 1:01:48
Label: Burning World Records
Emotions. Full of emotions. Nostalgia, love, heart beating. Evening autumn weather, hazy but also hot, moisture, coffee with the booklet in hand, reading, feeling, getting emotional. Going back and forward, listening. Being totally focused, trying to have nothing to break your attention. To suck the notes, the words with all the vibrancy and vibrancy of youth, to feel the enthusiasm for the discovery of something magical, something unprecedented, to become a part of this discovery. That is how I felt as a young boy in 1995 with the release of “Solar Lovers” of the Dutch CELESTIAL SEASON. An album that really shocked me.
The years passing by, the world moved on, I moved on (I believe so), so did CELESTIAL SEASON and left the road of Doom/Death sound going to more alternative paths, until they decided to “close the store” in 2000. For almost 20 years silence, until the company of the vocalist Stefan Ruiters (member of ORPHANAGE for a while), the bass player Lucas Van Slegtenhorst, the drummer Jason Kohnen, the guitar players Olly Smit and Pim van Zanen decided to reactivate and play together again. In this second beginning, they called the violin player Jiska ter Bals and the cello player Elianne Anemaat to take part, a very important move as we will see later.
The album “The Secret Teachings” starts in the best way, the magical violin that travels you until the heavy/brutal vocals of Stefan Ruiters take place, same as always, as if 20 years never passed. Thirteen songs in total, 3 of them are instrumental, with the old school Doom/Death aura to wander everywhere and haunt the space, showing that if “The Secret Teachings” was released after “Solar Lovers”, it would launch the career of CELESTIAL SEASON and could be placed in the same stand with “Serenades”, “Turn Loose The Swans”, “Icon” even the “Wildhoney”, not to say the “Macabre Sunsets” if the drum machine was out. “They Saw It Come From The Sky” και “Lunar Child” are not songs that you find every day, when “A Veil Of Silence” travels you to distant, mythical worlds, worlds that like another homeland of Lotus Eaters do not let you easily go back, forgetting who you are and where you are from and most importantly, where you started and where you would end up. The song “Red Water” slow as it should, majestic, pompous, imperial with the assistance of Kitty Staunton is the perfect finish to what you just experienced.
“The Secret Teachings” is not an album just to listen, is an album for a personal experience. The only thing I didn’t like was the long duration, just about more than an hour. Maybe, if they had released something smaller, an EP for example, they could attract a wider audience. I was a bit disappointed, maybe angry with CELESTIAL SEASON, because even if they had the ideas and the power, they didn’t release this album when they should. It is very difficult to explain to a newer in age listener, how it is to feel again the same emotions many years later by listening to an album. I really wish for everyone to feel and live this kind of déjà vu.
Emotions. Full of emotions. Nostalgia, love, heart beating. Evening autumn weather, hazy but also hot, moisture, coffee with no booklet this time to read, to feel, to get emotional. Going back and forward, listening. Being totally focused, trying to have nothing to break your attention. To suck the notes, the words with all the vibrancy and vibrancy of youth, to feel the enthusiasm for the discovery of something magical, something you’ve lived before and been stigmatized, to become a part of this discovery. This is how I felt, more mature now in age, in 2020 with the release of “ The Secret Teachings” of the Dutch CELESTIAL SEASON, an album that really manages to put you in the mood of an age, from a band that has nothing to prove to anyone.
Rating: 8/10
Editor: Dimos Karadimos
Related Link: CELESTIAL SEASON – Facebook Page
