Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Siddharta
Label: Dallas Records
Release: 2001
Length: 61:23
Rating: 4.5/5
Emboldened by the warm welcome and successful landing of their debut “Id” (RockLine review HERE), in short, by the sweet success that marked their first steps, the guys kept hammering the iron while it was hot. “Id” stood out for its many layers, and also for the several possible directions the band could take from there.
For “Nord” they decided to sharpen the sound toward greater control and bolder contrast between its basic building blocks. The sound on “Nord” is far more polished and cleaned up than on “Id”. There’s a clear liking for a classic setup of sound and arrangements, with keyboards pushing the symphonic element front and center. Siddharta cranked up the guitar distortion, which is practically metallized on the new record. Sound loops and programmed samples, combined with synth prosthetics, get more room to breathe, and there’s even vocals sung through effects in the choruses (the track “01”). The pull toward symphonic elements shows in the very design of the songs; B Mashina even carries a violin arrangement. This might just be the track that, in four and a half minutes, hands the listener the most direct taste of what “Nord” is all about. After the middle instrumental section, led by a sax solo, the speech of the late Slovenian alpinist Tomaž Humar symbolically appears in the transition before the chorus.
In the new sound, with more control and less organic feel, the contrast of the bass lines is also pushed further up in the overall sonic picture than on “Id”. Apart from two tracks, the bass on “Nord” was contributed by then-(still-)guest musician Jani Hace.
The knack for crafting chorus hooks that balance melody and punch gives “Nord” a bigger batch of “hitmakers” than “Id”. The first half of the album in particular is a straight run of Klinik, Neon, B Mashina, Samo edini… and later Platina nails it shut, a track that keeps the acoustic emphasis and, along with Neon, is where Siddharta most effectively built the verse-chorus relationship into the winning hit of “Nord” (yeah, women will be the death of us – good thing, otherwise Platina wouldn’t “hit” so hard). All of them make the most of stately chorus melodies with that signature veil of melancholy, which gives way to a sense of pathos (Samo edini) or defiance (Apokalipsa, B Mashina). The choruses, as a rule, all come armed with wound-up, steel-hardened guitar riffing joined by symphonic keyboard arrangements. That gives off a hint of icy breath running through the whole album.
Detours on the album? Keltvek, with its lead tin-whistle melody and mighty roaring chorus, where thundering manly vocals build most of the icy atmosphere against booming percussion. Eboran, a triumphant trick that kills any danger of the album sinking into monotony and nicely shakes up its dynamic flow, as the band decides to record the track entirely in the opposite direction. It carries the melos of an arabesque, and even the verses take on an undertone as if coming from the Middle East. The anthemic chorus stays up front and its melodic payoff is squeezed for all it’s worth.
So on “Nord”, Siddharta “dug its teeth” into a bold upgrade of concise, compact messaging. They capitalized on their signature “id” through concise melodic minimalism, enriched with sonic collages of programmed samples, synths, symphonic keyboard arrangements, and the occasional deepening of the symphonic atmosphere (violin, tin whistle). The sax is pushed back into the middle instrumental sections only and no longer serves to support the guitar riff phrases. At the same time the sound turns icy, logical, rational – nicely summed up by the gloomy “totemic” cover art, which commands us to bow to western civilization, the symbol of “logical matter”, which on “Nord” replaced the natural weaving of sonic collages on the debut “Id”.
The genius of strong messages, delivered through the melodic payoff of verses in Siddharta’s typical use of the Slovenian language, is still with us. It’s perhaps best captured by the tracks Opice and Zoo 69, which, despite strong and well-rounded lead melodies, somehow get buried under the “hail” of hits on “Nord”.
The album really has just one minus. It should have ended with Zoo 69. Siddharta clearly never hid their big ambition and creative drive, so they wanted to give their musical masses as much as possible. Hence an album that runs over an hour. The last three tracks would have been better off labeled with the prefix “bonus”. Orion Lady is a wordplay stitched together from snippets of lyrics and titles of the rest of the tracks on “Nord”. It has a cabaret touch, successfully pairing Tomi’s manly vocals with piano. Next comes a remix of Eboran with the guitar riff mass stripped out, percussion replacing the drums, and arrangements that dig the track’s Arabic melos even deeper. Outro picks up the leading guitar motif from “01”, topped with a sax solo, the kind of payoff we really miss on “Nord”. So at the album’s close the band offers nothing special, just restating what’s already been said in recaps with a slightly different spin. It feels like “Nord” fully calms down here and loses the pomp the band builds across the bulk of its skeleton. It gives you the sense that the essence of “Nord” had already been said in the first fifty minutes of its running time.
When “Nord” came out in 2001, it set off a real “Siddhartamania” in Slovenia. With it, Siddharta firmly planted themselves in every sphere of the pulse of rock culture in Slovenia, smashed sales records and reached double platinum. The band thus bent its development forces toward amplifying pompous melodicism, which, compared to “Id”, they achieved with more compact riff (“metallized”) distortion, increasingly decked out with symphonic arrangements, deepening the dramatic atmosphere through more generous use of programming and crafty spices of added sound loops. Through all of this, the use of Tomi’s charisma as a vocalist is optimized even further on the album, and his signature approach delivers the dramatic pomp of “Nord” with even greater ease!
Lineup
Tomi M. – vocals, guitar, timpani, backing vocals
Primož B. – guitar
Tomaž O.R. – keyboards, programming, backing vocals
Cene R. – saxophone
Primož M. – bass guitar
Boštjan M. – drums, percussion
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Jani Hace – bass guitar (all tracks except no. 8 and 12)
Peter Penko – keyboards, programming, samples, timpani, percussion
Anita Kay – backing vocals on tracks no. 4 and 15
Boštjan Gombač – tin whistles on track no. 9
Bojan Cvetrežnik – violin on track no. 6
Robert Rebolj – brushes on track no. 11
Production
Peter Penko & Žare Pak
Tracklist
01. Intro (1:13)
02. Apokalipsa (4:35)
03. Klinik (3:29)
04. Eboran (3:03)
05. Neon (Shusuglao) (4:08)
06. B Mashina (4:30)
07. Samo edini (4:47)
08. Na soncu (3:41)
09. Keltvek (3:50)
10. 01 (3:35)
11. Platina (4:27)
12. Opice (3:22)
13. Zoo 69 (4:32)
14. Orion Lady (4:43)
15. Eboran (remix) (5:15)
16. Outro (1:58)
