Espiritismo "Ceremonia De Invocación" CD

I bought this CD blindly, only knowing it was Argentinian black metal. The booklet was very promising; thick and glossy, high quality paper and printing, fantastic black and white artwork. The CD itself has an attractive pentagram-based printed artwork....the works ! But to my dismay the booklet stated ¨this is a direct take, recorded at Nox Studio with just two air mics¨. It thought it was either a ripoff or an attempt to recreate ¨Transilvanian Hunger¨; turned out it was neither. More on that later.
These guys play a very slow-paced variety of black metal; not doomy at all, mind you, for there are not any doom elements in the music, or downtuned instruments for that matter. There is just one grating, trebly guitar, playing slow, unintricated circular riffs during the average over 10' songs, without much variation. Same for the drums and -on some songs- audible bass, which becomes noticeable when playing long notes or open strings are left to resonate. Guitar is played by several people alternately, and there are several vocalists as well according to the booklet. The piercing vocals are part screamed, part howled, and hit the coffin nail in the head every time.
I know at this point I am sounding as if I am describing a terribly boring record, but it is exactly the opposite case. The energy is through the roof and the overall invoking, ceremonial atmosphere of this stuff is so eerie and unsettling it kept me on the edge of my couch for its whole duration. The end result is at the same time pleasantly hypnotic and exciting at the same time, a rare-to-find concoction that works delightfully. This is Aannia Yossa good, if not better.
Returning to the way this was recorded : it does penalize the sound. Although every instrument is audibly there, the air mikes did not pick up the rhythm section audibly enough. Now with a subwoofer and an equalizer, this can be remedied in full. Another quirk is that the guitar sounds way louder on one channel than it does on the other on every song but on one of them; go figure. I just switched them to mono to even the sonic landscape ant it worked like a charm.
If you are not put off by lo-fi, you will love this release. And 2 years later, these guys released another CD, this time professionally recorded and mixed, that is to die for.

Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...