Released on 6-panels digipak limited to 300 copies.
Recorded in December MMXIX in Estudio Treboada by Paco Liaño. Cellos and acoustic guitars on "Lamentos No Medulio" recorded in Estudios Oniros by Martiño Paz. Mixed and mastered by Javier Félez at Moontower Studios.
Artwork by Joan Llopis Doménech. Layout by Ninnagesh Iliberitanum.
Purify fire, spread the ashes. Saúde!
For me the local scene has always been an issue that I haven't known how to manage, on the one hand I think it's important to support local metal bands because at the end of the day it's all part of a community that is bigger than art and music, but at the same time, there are so many bands from so many different places, so many hidden gems, that it feels a bit pointless to dedicate time and attention to bands of lesser quality just because they are geographically close to me.
On the other hand, to assume, as I unfortunately have done for years, that your local scene is not capable of producing anything that is not of great quality is a mistake that I think many of us unconsciously make, because what comes from countries other than our own always has a more exotic air about it. Even so the band Lostregos entered my radar when I discovered them thanks to a Bathory tribute compilation, I was surprised that they were from my own city and that they sang in Galician, the local language of the region, which gave a certain more epicness to a Bathory song, but despite this I had them under my radar for a while but I never got around to listening to some of their own work.
Instead of waiting for a chance to start listening to them, my girlfriend decided to speed up the process and gift me this album, I can never thank her enough for it. Lostregos' second album is a masterpiece in the current pagan black metal scene. It perfectly displays those natural landscapes integrated and drawn by the music and at the same time the sound manages to be incredibly aggressive and raw, the ferocity of the guitars permeates the whole album making them the most remarkable part, they have a very marked presence from a melodic point of view, reminding me of Watain's "Lawless Darkness" in the best possible sense, but even with that Lostregos manages to give the music its own personality, including numerous passages with keyboards, acoustic guitar, spoken word making the long tracks much more enjoyable and one has the feeling that they progress in a natural and interesting way.
Another thing I madly love about this album is the implementation of the guitar solos, and although it seems silly even nowadays there are black metal fans who see with bad eyes the inclusion of guitar solos in the genre (I guess these so-called fans ignore the first wave and the existence of classics like "The Seventh Day of Doom" by Tormentor) but the truth is that I really like them and even more the way Lostregos includes them, as I have already mentioned we are talking about long themes, so the solos fulfil several functions, both to alleviate the dramatic load and to serve as a great finale thanks to that epicness introduced by the sound of the electric guitar many times with influences of the most classic heavy metal and even with traces of hard rock, there will be who dislikes it, but to me it sounds like a wonderful thing.
Nothing can be perfect, unfortunately in the same way that I like most of Lostregos' implementations of their music, the totally doom metal intro of the last track feels totally out of place, it doesn't fit with the rest of the song nor does it feel like it adds anything to the track, fortunately the track that has the weakest intro is also the track that has the best ending, and also a great ending to the album, this being a distinctly guitar driven sequence that elevates the quality of a solid album to an outstanding one.
And this is all I can say about Lostregos' second album, a long play that I fell in love since the first listen, an ode to different genres that the members of the band undoubtedly love, a work that has made me appreciate the local scene much more, so I can only thank the band for making this tremendous musical work and thanks to Ana for gifting it to me.
Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIRfi-0xnR0
