“I was visiting Kansas City for a football game earlier this year.  My team lost, but it’s just a game, and Kansas City is a wonderful place.  I had aspirations of finding some demo tapes in the local shops like I did with Verlust when I was in Hawaii.  I was wandering around outside a casino and decided to check my email.  What landed in my inbox was a very sweet letter and a record from a band called Sahlm, from Mexico.  I always listen to everything.  I put on headphones and walked alone through the neon lights, loud, clanging slot machines and summer night.  The music struck me as powerful and beautiful. An engaging mix of post-black metal, doom, shoegaze.  I was taken back to when these sounds first entered my world in about 2007-9.  I was also moved by the letter, and the lyrical content and concept.  You see, I’m not an optimistic person.  I adopt a scorched earth policy as a standard matter of principle.  I live in a world on fire, lit by my own discarded match.  It’s fine.  I don’t mind the heat.  I started to realize that there can be hope.  My own music, by nature is hopeless.  I offer no solutions.  I offer no insight.  It’s just reality.  I’ve been told by many people that my music brings them hope.  Well, this Sahlm record began to give me hope.  Having been surrounded my more suicides than I’d like in the last two years (one is too many), I’m always keen to listen to those who have survived.  I wonder what my friends would say to me now, if they had survived. Musically, I found a sense of liberation and freedom in Sahlm.  There are beautiful melodies existing alongside brutally heavy parts.  Of course, if you know me, you know I have an affinity for Mexico, its people, and culture.  So it just felt right to work with Sahlm.  I found some peace and hope in these songs and I’m proud to share them through CSR with you all.  The music is grand, ambitious, and powerful.” 

– Damian Master, Colloquial Sound Recordings, USA, 2023.

IN ARTIFEX VERBA:

“As a person who has had depression since childhood and attempted suicide several times, it was hard to write an album about it.  It became easier when I embraced healing.  I used to want to die, but today I want to live.  I have so many reasons to live.  “Sense Of Light” is an intensely personal album that pulls back the curtain of depression to expose the light I’ve been searching for.  The light to heal and live.  It’s my hope that people will be able to find a narrative in this album that will bring them a sense of healing through the darkness.  In the depression, pain, and suffering of this album – may you find the glimmers of hope.”

– Suk Ho, Sahlm, MEXICO, 2023.