Portuguese Sepulcros are hideous, a slithering creeping sonic monstrosity spread across four nightmarish horrors that will have you balling your eyes out, screaming and begging to be let free from the aural torture they have inflicted upon you when you play this debut album. The funereal terror that is meted out by this quintet is palpable as the four expansive tracks are bookended by intro and outro pieces that act like portals into and out of the corruptive Sepulcros universe. Into that universe is the intro ‘Involucro Oco’ where background noises and feedback tease you down the gateway where the title track awaits.
That title track ensnares, trapped in a universe with four nightmarish sonic monstrosities with no means of escape. That journey is torturous, agonising, excruciating and painful as the title track has anguish riddled riffing delivered via the demented, maniacal and guttural vocals coupled to barbaric blasted speed that arrives without warning. The pacing goes through phases of ultra-slow tar filled sludge to death metal blasting that has a war like standing as the whole song produces that impenetrable dense opaque battery.
Following is ‘Marcha Funebre’ which as the title suggests is punishingly slow, infesting the listener with unwavering miasmic bass fog. Again the vocals have that terrorising intent, gutturally gruesome with a ghastly amorphous abrasive style as the song abruptly changes the pace to a frenzied manic tempo. There is an inhumanity here making you feel skittish wondering where the song is going next as the onslaught seldom relents before the track flows into ‘Magno Caos’ with its more atmospheric opening. Again there is that cloying atmospheric horror threading through the song, clinging to your senses and your body, infecting you, withering you and destroying you. With a grinding pervasive terror the song thrusts into a blast beat that I didn’t expect but has devastating results that you sends you backwards.
Contrasting hugely is ‘Hecatombe’ which has a post-rock posture that I particularly enjoyed as the song is slightly gentler relatively speaking. With atmospheric styling the song as some cool sequential build-up allowing the track to be that more expansive but still equally dense like the preceding tracks but you get the sense that song is channelling its energy towards a doorway to allow you escape the Sepulcros universe, so to speak, as the song is definitely lighter in mood only to have that hint come crashing down when the song pivots brilliantly into a cavernous dirge, the intensity is tremendous as the song reasserts a blast sequence that possesses an almost blackened feathering as the song finally unveils that gateway to escape the Sepulcros nightmare via the outro ‘Humana Vacuidade’ which has a similar style to the intro with an eerie piece of percussion and noises returning you to normality but eternally and indelibly scarred.
(8.5/10 Martin Harris)
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