This quartet only gathered under a cloak of second wave darkness a year ago and this is their debut album and indeed 1st release of any kind. With that in mind and no perfecting over demo material one may expect that this is a band only really just finding their feet. That is certainly not the case here and even the first listen makes it more than apparent that these Spaniards have embraced that frosty Scandinavian sound and not only know their source material back to front but have immediately perfected it. No doubt this is partly due to time spent in other acts such as Obsidian Kingdom, Blazemth and Erial among others.
Embracing themes including that of “European pagan culture” here they take us on a narrative trip down the river Styx. That in itself is nothing new and it is a theme well explored. It’s one I would consider perfect for dark ambient music, slow, solemn, dripping water, immersed in underground caverns with some sinister dungeon synth. That’s not what we get in the slightest here and Charon takes us on a giddy fast-flowing ride akin to being an a roller-coaster. Perhaps he is making a point, although one would want a calm final journey down to Hades maybe someone forgot to pay his toll and without those two coins, he is far from happy.
This one batters in the second opener ‘Akheron’ starts and hardly stops its hostile barrage until it finally arrives at destination ¾ of an hour later. It’s an expertly played tour-de-force with that ex Obsidian Kingdom frontman Saten Haz Im Nu rasping with forked-tongue over the top of the rolling drum bombast and cleaving guitar scourge. Melody is not forgotten in the slightest and its rigidly enforced with plenty of thorny grooves and barbed hooks. There are occasional clean and gorgeous guitar lines glistening away and giving a slight grandeur to things and in the midst of it all the throat-slinger fires out some higher-toned hoary exclamations. But ultimately it is downright viciousness at the heart of this darkness as our narrator confronts and embraces his ultimate passing via the poetic and venomously spat out lyrical output; “there are no more stars in heaven no more candles light the night all my hopes, my dreams, my life all have fallen, demoted I’m done.”
This is one of those albums that hits in a bit of a blur, I guess stylistically it is similar to the likes of Dark Funeral, Lord Belial and Naglfar, it is certainly up there with the works of the Swedish masters. That said there’s not a massive amount of deviation from their bitter, full-blooded assault. We finally get a foot of peddle on the appropriately entitled ‘Mortis,’ yes death indeed comes creeping here but not for long. Once the shadowy cloaked figure has introduced himself its business as usual, back to the cleaving of souls. Lack of deviation is a moot point here anyway, the music is so vitriolic as it batters you senseless, you are not going to care as one fiery baptism ploughs headlong into the next. It also means that I can wrap this one up here having said everything necessary and simply focus on those shimmering guitar lines of ‘Caronte’ and enjoy the rough and tumble of the second half of the album. Fogos have delivered a belter of a debut and this one comes highly recommended for lovers of vicious, melodic and true old-school blackness.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
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