Stoner HiVe: Saturna – Light and Shadow

Saturna – Light and Shadow
Spinda Records / Ripple Music / Discos Macarras – 2026
Rock, Prog, Psych, Seventies
Rated: ****

I still spin The Elven’s Solstice album religiously and the Shine single whenever I’m struggling with life, emotions or hardship. It always helps. A lot. And two parts of The Elven project are of course also members of Saturna. And on their new Light and Shadow album, you can definitely hear some of those The Elven sonics rubbed off, in the absolutely right way…

So, learning how much we love The Elven and Saturna’s 2023 album The Reset, we naturally could not let their new Light and Shadow pass by without a few of our silly words. Cause the Barcelona quartet returns with a thirteen songs and forty-six minutes of warm, heavy, soulful rock. They’ve turned the lights down and the amplifiers up! It’s radiant and glowing!

The opening track Unheard shoots in with a mighty charge, guitars blazing while the melody keeps the fire under control. Following Falling Apart shoves us back into Saturna territory. The title track follows, a glorious Sabbath-shaped beast, bluesy, heavy and carrying that magic of riffs that sound like they’ve been waiting for fifty years to finally be played..

But Saturna isn’t just about the riffs of yore or the golden age of heavy rock. Absence has those beautiful harmonies you love from Saturna, intertwined with acoustic and electric guitars. While following About You strips everything down to its wooden bones, once again showing off the The Elven colors. But the rhythmic groove does not lay dormant for long, as following So Long makes clear. Seventies rock, proto metal, motoring and an easy rider if ever there was one…

Heavy progressive blues without enough psychedelic touches to make it uplifting when needed or burrowing down and heading for the dark when called for. Indeed, all sides have their moment and their time. Light and Shadow feels like they’re filtering sunlight through an old amplifier, warm, dusty, soulful and alive. Saturna honor the past without becoming its prisoners. They take the old flames, add their own oxygen, and let them burn brightly once again. And even the shadows cast, feel glowing and radiant!