This is the second album by this Chilean band and I was promised abyssic hellhounds, ritual, fervent darkness, mystifying song structures, unease, dread and occultic (?) death metal. So, with hopes of waves of weirdness similar to The Axis Of Perdition, Blut Aus Nord, Portal and QRIXKUOR I waded in.
Ok this is going to sound mean, for which I apologise and remind the assembled that I am not a musician. A fervent lifelong fan of the heavy, weird and esoteric but not a musician. But: Why anyone would find these song structures mystifying is completely beyond me. Apart from just about enough slightly off kilter lead work here and there and two quiet passages this is pretty much half an hour of straight down the line death and death/doom depending on tempo.
So, expectations crushed I then turned my attention to what I had and not what I had hoped for. As orthodox death metal is it good? I like death metal so…
Eh. Hmm. Essentially, we have four songs here that once over the initial beginnings all progress in a repetitive, mostly mid paced with the odd lead that is just about able to sound ‘eerie’. The vocals are growled and equally unvaried. And, well, really that’s it. It is what it is.
The production is ok if a little flat and as a band they seem perfectly competent; tight and focussed, aware of what they want to sound like. Just the song-writing sadly does nothing for me. Putting in a slow bass only passage does not qualify as mysterious and there is little sense of mood or place or time. There’s also nothing of thee sense of dark, unsettling gothic esotericism that I have found in so much Chilean art. Nothing drags me in and nothing makes me want to stay.
Sorry, as I said I know this sounds mean. These guys have worked hard on this I’m sure so if you are into…well death metal give it a look maybe. But there’s nothing here for me I’m afraid.
(3.5/10 Gizmo)
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