SOLACE, the long-running New Jersey outfit built around frontman Justin Goins and guitarist Tommy Southard, have earned an 8.5/10 review for their latest album, "Fading Failing Ruin," with the write-up calling it "their finest album yet."
Though frequently filed under stoner metal, the review makes a point of arguing the band deserves a wider frame, describing "Fading Failing Ruin" as "much deeper and more dynamic than that" tag suggests. Across the album, SOLACE balance short, riff-driven tracks with more expansive, progressive-leaning passages, moving between psychedelic textures, straightforward hard rock muscle and prog-influenced songwriting without losing a cohesive identity.
Central to that identity, according to the review, is Southard's guitar work, with the piece noting that "his devotion to The Riff remains absolute" even as the band pushes into more adventurous territory elsewhere on the record. Goins's soulful vocal performance is singled out as well, anchoring the album's more atmospheric passages.
The clearest showcase of that ambition is "Wrath's Object (The Big Fall)," a 15-minute centerpiece described as a "lysergic odyssey" that fuses crushing heaviness with extended atmospheric exploration — the kind of long-form statement that has become something of a signature for the band over its three-decade run. The review sums up the record as "an adventurous and diverse set of songs that drip with authenticity and humble strength."
SOLACE formed in New Jersey in the mid-1990s and have built a cult following over three decades on the strength of albums that consistently favor songwriting substance over genre orthodoxy, even as lineups and label situations have shifted around Southard and Goins as the band's constants. "Fading Failing Ruin" arrives as, by the review's own account, a career-best entry in that catalog — high praise for a band three decades into its existence, and a reminder that some of underground heavy music's most rewarding records continue to come from acts who have spent decades quietly refining their own sound rather than chasing trends.