Derek Note – Since it’s The Brother’s birthday week, I let him choose the music.

This year I bring you not one song, not two songs, but two full albums… kinda.

Samael is a band that has changed a lot over the years. They started as straight-up black metal before moving into a more electronic/industrial metal.

The mid-point between these two styles was 1996’s Passage – one of my favorite albums and an amazing work:

In 1997, Xy (Samael’s keyboards/drum machine artist) did a side project called Xytras where he redid the entire Passage album as piano and syths. It is a wonderful conversion and well worth a listen even if you do not care for the heaviness of Passage.