A few months after the vinyl edition, we are now offered a cd version of the latest Sophia album, a release of Cyclic Law Records from Canada. It contains a bonus track and video as extras. The special pacakaging looks really great. In general it has has the same dark and mysterious artwork as the LP sleeve, but for some reason it works even better on this special sized fold out cover, comparable to the recent Arcana album “The new light”. These increasingly occurring non-standard sizes cause some practical storage puzzles though, but that’s a luxury problem.
On “Deconstruction of the world” Peter Bjargö works together with Stefan Eriksson. It is a strong album, which you will certainly like if you appreciate previous Sophia material or for instance In Slaughter Natives. Powerful orchestral hymns are alternated with dark industrial soundscapes. The mood is more martial and threatening than before. A few tracks really stand out, like the heavy ‘Machine’.
This cd features an additional unreleased track called ‘Depravity’, which is a solid dark ambient piece with speech samples, heavy percussion and industrial sounds. The disc also contains a Quicktime videoclip to accompany this track, which images of psychiatric patients thematically remind me of Sophia’s previous mcd ‘The Seduction of madness’.