Review Summary: An excellent collection of songs that may have worked better as a handful of individual singles, but despite an issue with in-cohesiveness still manages to be a fun and enticing listen, as usual from an artist who has not released a poor project yet.
Sadistik is an underground hip-hop artist hailing from Seattle, Washington, who has developed a cult-like fanbase in this years since his 2008 debut, The Balancing Act. Thanks to his dizzying rhyme schemes, spacious and sometimes atmospheric beats, and never-ending ability to wear his heart on his sleeve when writing lyrics, he has released a string of albums and EP's that have enticed viewers for the part of the last decade.
Let's get straight to it, and begin with the projects opener, Waves. Waves consists of two rapid fire and intricate verses, and about two minutes too much of the chorus. The song as a whole comes off as a tad bit lazy, with only a small portion of the song actually being devoted to verses. Perhaps the repetition of the chorus would not be such a detriment, if the chorus itself were more catchy and memorable. With the simple repeating of: "Coming in waves/ All different colors and shapes up in my face/ Flooded with hundreds of planes & none of em gray/ Everyone's summer it's strange," the chorus does much to get in the way of the replay ability of this track. It's not that the hook is necessarily bad, yet it simultaneously still does little to make itself stand out.
The second track, You Dead, is another example of a style of song that has only recently infiltrated Sadistik's music. Serving as another inclusion to Sadistik's handful of banger-focused tracks, You Dead is pulled off well enough to return to, but not cohesive enough to feel like it belongs on the project as a whole. In the past Sadistik has released songs without ever inclusing them on a proper album-lengthed release, and I believe You Dead would have served better as a loose single, in the same vein as Perseus (2015). Besides a laughably bad Mr. Mother***in' Esquire verse, Sadistik and the song's other feature, Nacho Picasso, spit two stone cold verses that receive no complaints from me. Despite the song not feeling like it cohesively fits together with the project, it is perhaps the most fun, and certainly one of the most memorable tracks amongst the whole project.
The following tracks, Videodrome, I Bought a Gun, and Out the Dark, all give us exactly what we have come to expect of Sadistik at this point. It is not until the closer, Mourning Glory, that we get the true standout track. Mourning Glory, a nearly seven-minute epic, is quite possibly the most impressive and beautiful song that Sadistik has released thus far. Being the song most reminiscent of the style on his earlier albums, this one will most likely be the favorite of fans who got into Sadistik's music at an earlier point in his career. Spacey production, appalling wordplay, and incredible honesty are the reason this track is just so incredible. The second verse of this song is jaw dropping in it's technical precision and potency.
"I got these bars in my head like I'm Phineas Gage
This gauge is on empty so give me some space
Spaced out from the memories I didn't erase
Rays pound all around me, kissing my face
Face down, down on my luck, lust for the crown
Crown in my cup, coupled amounts, mountains erupt
Ruptures I count, count-downs downtrodden
Trot around downtowns 'til I drown in a bottle, like
And now I'm reading Walden
Walled-in like I'm sleeping in a coffin
Coughin' while I'm breathing in the toxins
Talk sins when I'm needing to absolve them
Themselves, set sail, sail set
Hellbent, inhale, tell sins
Send tales of the tailspins
Tip scales, scale-skinned when the trail ends"
In terms of heart-wrenching honesty and elusive film and book references, Salo Sessions is another amazing release in Sadistik's very consistent catalogue. Though where this album strives in creativity, it lacks in consistency. If the listener is able to look past a slight inconsistency in sound to appreciate these songs on an individual basis, then this album may be deserving of a higher rating. However, this is an album review, and not a review of each song's ability on its own.
All in all, Salo Sessions (2016) is another excellent addition to Sadistik's discography, even if it does suffer from issues relating to cohesiveness or consistency. What may have worked better as six individual singles still packs a hefty punch as a singular project.
