Limited to 600 copies.
This is my second Espiritismo CD; I bought and reviewed their excellent, studio-live ¨Ceremonia De Invocación¨, from 2014. These fellas used to record only lo-fi demos and the like, so this is their first proper venture into a pro studio. It is a quite different affair, not only due to the improved recording, but because changes in style. The older CD was slower-paced,with a more ceremonial and invocative atmosphere. This one is faster-paced, colder in overall style, and has clear doom elements to the songs. There are only 8 songs along the almost 52' opus; they do retain the ceremonial features of yore, if to a lesser degree, concentrating on more of a hard-hitting style. The chunky booklet has super-good artwork and lyrics, printed on high-quality, glossy paper. It is a very pro affair, on par with more expensive releases from mainstream labels.
The opener track has a 35¨ keyboard intro; very fitting, and the only keyboard to be found on the record, unfortunately, for I love keyboards with my BM. It is followed by a quite sabbathian, chugging riffing, with a mostly full, opaque guitar tone, cleaner than the average wire-thin, ultra-distorted tone most bands use, which gets treblier when it is called for, and the occasional sharp feedback of a second guitar in the mix, used as a musical element. The drumming is very tribal in style, unlike on the rest of the album. The second song picks up the pace a lot, and from there on the album is a rollercoaster of different tempos, from snail-paced downtempo doomy parts, to ultra fast ones with more conventional tremolo picking, sometimes over a relentlessly rapid double kick drum backdrop. I usually hate doom metal, but those elements are both sparsely and tastefully included and executed, and end up enhancing the overall atmosphere of the album, fitting the songs like a glove.
The vocals deserve a separate mention; they are the loudest part of the mix, and the rest of the instruments seem to just revolve around them. Whether this is the result of an artistic choice on the part of the band members or of whoever mixed this is not clear, but since the studio is owned by the guitarist (according to the booklet) I would tend to conclude it was intentional. Do not get me wrong; I really liked the high-pitched, throat-shredding vocals, with brief and sparse incursions in the growling department, I found them a little too highly mixed-in, yet their tone and modulation compromised intelligibility; I have a firm grasp of the Spanish language, yet I had to read the lyrics from the booklet. No big deal, since this is a common occurrence with black metal.
The album closer is a take-no-prisoners fast and furious song, with catchier riffs and cascading toms; a great way to conclude the opus. The rest of the album is not catchy at all, and it is not an easy listen, which can be a good or bad thing, depending on your personal taste. The sound is very good, although a tad lacking in the bottom-end department; nothing a good subwoofer cannot enhance. Buy at your own peril. A solid 80% to me, despite the fact that it did not blow my mind.
Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
