Official logo of the band
© Bogdan Dobrescu
Mauna Sol
© Viviana Costan Moiseanu
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words “The Calling”? For some, it may be the distant echo of a forgotten road, a voice from a place abandoned long ago, where only dust and memory still keep watch. For others, it may be the whisper that arrives in the dead of night, when silence grows heavy and the masks worn through daily life begin to crack. A calling is seldom a gentle thing. More often, it is a debt that must be paid, a summons that cannot be ignored, whether it leads towards salvation or ruin.
For the members of Romanian post-black metal act Mauna Sol, those two words carry a different burden. “The Calling” follows the reflections of a self-imposed hermit who abandons the familiar world in pursuit of rebirth. Through the songs of the album, he recounts a painful process of self-destruction, a symbolic suicide of identity enacted beneath the merciless gaze of a hostile desert. The old self must perish so that something new may emerge from the dust. It is neither a triumphant transformation nor an easy redemption. In a few words, it is an ordeal measured in solitude, suffering, and the slow shedding of everything once believed to define a man.
Such paths are easy enough to describe from afar. Walking them, however, is another matter entirely. Before judging whether the members of the group could give substance to such ambitions, it is worth returning to the first time their music crossed my path.
Several years ago, I heard the artists perform live for the first time and came away with the impression that they possessed genuine potential. More importantly, it felt like the sort of potential that, if nurtured properly, could one day yield a truly strong album.
Of course, as with all worthwhile things, time demanded its due. “The Calling” finally arrived on 15 May 2026 through Loud Rage Music. Before experiencing the album live at Quantic [Bucharest, Romania], I decided to spend some time with it at home, allowing its songs to settle and reveal their character before committing a few thoughts to paper.
Among the Bones of Yesterday
The debut album from the musicians of Mauna Sol contains eight tracks, each contributing another fragment to the larger narrative that unfolds across the record. Nothing feels rushed or misplaced. Instead, the songs advance with purpose, like milestones set along a road whose destination remains obscured by heat, dust and distance.
The pilgrimage begins with “A New Life”, a shorter piece than those that follow, yet one that leaves an immediate impression. As its title readily suggests, it marks the first steps towards the reconstruction of a shattered self, the moment when the old identity is abandoned and the foundations of something new begin to take shape.
Such a theme demands momentum, and “A New Life” delivers it in abundance. The track possesses an energetic pulse that immediately pushes the album forward. During its opening moments, one could easily mistake it for a straightforward black metal composition. Yet the further the song unfolds, the more its progressive tendencies begin to reveal themselves.
The track features strong vocal and instrumental sections, as well as solos that stay in your mind after it ends.
And there is something else that remains once the music ends: the lyrics. I do not remember the act of breaking free being described so precisely. It feels like the band members’ emotions played an important role in their creation.
But every rebirth is threatened by temptation. It has always been so, since the beginning of time. I imagine that is why the members of Mauna Sol felt that the placement of the track “Temptation” comes immediately after “A New Life”.
With a longer duration than the opening composition, “Temptation” brings new nuances to the album. It is a piece focused heavily on atmosphere, in which the vocal and instrumental elements blend in harmony.
The same harmony can also be found in the following tracks, “Flirting with the Abyss”, “Agony” and “Mirage”. Out of this entire “bouquet”, I admit that “Mirage” resonated with me the most.
And yet, there is still the past. And this past has a nasty habit of coming back at you when you least want it. And since the members of the band know this, they also dedicated a song to this fact. Called “Elegy for the Past”, the composition, with a duration of approximately five minutes and thirty seconds, gives artist George Costan the greatest opportunity to demonstrate his vocal abilities. I do not know how much time the artist has spent perfecting his vocal technique, but I can guess there were many sessions.
Elsewhere, more precisely in “Death Poem” and “Inner Rewards”, the instrumental sections make their presence strongly felt.
Beneath Gold and Dust
In equal measure, I was also pleasantly surprised by the visual aspect of the album. For “The Calling”, the members of Mauna Sol chose to collaborate with artists Bogdan Dobrescu and Andrea Mantelli. What resulted is an image dominated by gold and brown tones, as though heat and time had left their mark upon it.
There is also a degree of mystery to it, with the central figure only partially revealed, as though emerging from or dissolving into the surrounding space.
Official cover artwork
© Bogdan Dobrescu [artwork], Andrea Mantelli [layout]
A Few Additional Thoughts
This is an album I had been waiting for a long time. Somewhere towards the end of 2022, when I also caught Mauna Sol live at Quantic, I told myself that if an album of theirs were ever released, I would make sure to get it. And here it is, finally arrived.
That earlier evening did not stand alone. Mauna Sol shared the stage with Groza and Exuviath, a moment that now feels less like coincidence and more like recurrence. Ancient Greek thought speaks of cycles embedded in nature and time, while Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence suggests that events are destined to return, again and again, under the same sky and the same burden of existence. In that sense, it feels almost fitting that the members of Mauna Sol return once more on 9 June 2026 alongside Groza.
Official announcement poster
© Quantic
Apart from that, this is an album that has clearly been wrought through long toil. Nothing about it feels casual or incidental. It bears the imprint of persistence, of something shaped slowly.
And within that persistence, the name of Marius Licu inevitably comes to the foreground. The album seems to gather itself around his presence. Around this core, however, the rest of the musicians are far from passive; they shape, pressure and colour the material in ways that give it depth and movement.
Guitar work moves between tremolo-driven passages and more measured phrasing, never settling into a single form for long. The rhythm tightens and loosens in turns, as if under an internal pressure that rises and recedes. The vocals remain present throughout, holding their place within the sound without being pushed aside or placed above it. Black metal remains the base point, with melodic fragments, atmospheric stretches and progressive turns entering and withdrawing without breaking continuity.
At times, there are even harmonic inflections that lean towards a more epic or traditional heavy metal sensibility.
And a part of the more obsessive, analytical corner of my mind draws a connection between the album’s central figure, the hermit, and Vysogota of Corvo from the writings of Andrzej Sapkowski. There is something in that isolation, in that distance from the world, that feels oddly familiar. Even the cover artwork, in its muted presence and partial concealment, seems to echo that association.
Among its clearest moments are “A New Life”, “Mirage” and “Death Poem”, which remain distinct within the record’s broader narrative.
… and the remaining impressions will come in due course, after the stage performance that continues to draw nearer.
Until Then, the Songs
“A New Life” [04:40];
“Temptation” [06:10];
“Flirting with the Abyss” [06:25];
“Agony” [05:32];
“Mirage” [10:17];
“Elegy for the Past” [05:23];
“Death Poem” [06:10];
“Inner Rewards” [04:38].
Find Mauna Sol!
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@maunasol1937;
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/35W551Os8Cp8MVs6wxXHeh;
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maunasolband;
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maunasolband/.
