Release Date August 14th, 2026
Format CD/Digital
Genre Gothic/Black Metal
Origin Finland
Soulgrind began in Finland in 1992 and has spent more than three decades crossing gothic metal, black metal, thrash, doom shading, keyboards, programmed textures and melodic darkness. Founded around guitar and programming, the band expanded its language through layered vocals, prominent keyboards and a rhythm section built for long, dramatic compositions. They have repeatedly returned to Finnish history, folklore, inner conflict, war, desire, death and the colder corners of the national psyche. That background matters here because "Ad Pulchram Mortem" is the band’s tenth album and its first full-length since "The Tuoni Pathway" in 2010.
The current six-member formation adds several vocal colors and enough guitar presence to shift between ceremonial passages, aggressive surges and broad melodic sections. This is no reunion package assembled around old photographs. It is a continuation of a long, strange path, written by a band whose genre borders have always remained loose. The new album arrives through Inverse Records with ten songs, artwork by Susanna Mansner and a title that connects beauty, mortality and devotion through a concise Latin phrase. Soulgrind’s history has never followed one narrow metal lane, and that refusal remains central to its character.
"Ad Pulchram Mortem" draws its power from the collision between cold melody and blackened aggression. Keyboards do more than decorate the guitar lines; they widen the scenery, darken the harmonic movement and place the songs inside a distinctly Nordic landscape. The guitars alternate between tremolo motion, stern riffing and melodic phrases shaped around melancholy, with the drums maintaining a firm physical pulse beneath the layered voices. Female vocals bring a stately, mournful edge. Lower and rougher voices pull the music toward older black and gothic metal.
The production is broad and detailed, allowing keyboards, bass and vocal layers to remain present during the heavier passages. It has depth without burying the riffs under studio gloss. "Dark Water Wide" enters the river of Tuonela and turns that image into psychological descent. "Tears Of The Earth", "A Whispered Curse Upon The Gale" and "Into The Shadows Of Devotion" extend the same language through water, wind, soil and shadow. The writing is ornate, though the album rarely slips into decorative excess. Several refrains arrive with immediate melodic pull, and the heavier sections retain enough severity to stop the atmosphere from becoming sentimental.
The ten-song sequence has a broad scale, with layers entering and withdrawing across verses, refrains and extended closing sections. Soulgrind uses melody as a source of unease, not relief. Minor-key keyboard lines sit above riff patterns that often advance in measured steps, giving the music a ceremonial shape. The vocal arrangement creates contrast between sorrow, menace and restrained grandeur without reducing the songs to a duet formula. There is also enough rhythmic variation to prevent the mid-paced sections from merging into one long passage. A few transitions return to similar keyboard shapes, and some vocal stacking becomes crowded near the climactic sections. Those moments expose how much Soulgrind places inside each composition. Simpler guitar figures occasionally deserve more space before another layer enters.
The album is at its best when the melody stays severe and the rhythm section holds a hard, steady frame underneath it. Its best passages arrive when keyboards and guitars converge on one bleak melodic line, then separate before the refrain. That tension prevents the grandeur from collapsing into empty ornament. The album asks for volume and patience, and a second visit reveals details hidden beneath the first impact. The result is dark Finnish metal with scale, character and emotional coldness, shaped by decades spent moving across extreme and gothic forms. "Ad Pulchram Mortem" is disciplined, melodic and severe, with enough depth to reward multiple visits and enough riff authority to stand beyond its mythology.
|8.3
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