Letalis: Bestia Occulta
Out 6th June on Trauma Records
Originally released in September 2022, the debut LP from this Chilean speed metal powerhouse sees an international release on Trauma Records this month. ‘Bestia Occulta’ dispenses with any self-conscious navel gazing. Completely untroubled by whether it meets some contrived quota of credibility, this is nothing more nor less than an unapologetic blast of raw heavy metal energy that ruthlessly invades the listener’s ears warts and all.
Letalis’s delivery is decidedly and authentically DIY. The production is rough yet immersive, as if we are witnessing a spellbindingly tight live performance. Crisp and clear drums blitz by with unadulterated speed and urgency, offering a performance as charismatic as it is technically precise, leaving no room for unnecessary ornamentation. Dual guitars dominate the foreground of the mix with a sharp, choppy tone ideally suited to maintaining the unbridled barrage of power straddling this album. Underpinning this is a relentless metallic gallop of thundering bass lines, easily cutting through the mix, bolstering the overexcited guitars or else offering deviant licks and trills at key junctures.
Jacqueline Jara’s bombastic vocal performance weaves its way between the dense onslaught of hyper fast lead guitar work and chugging speed thrills. Her voice apes the outrageous theatre of 80s speed metal of old, but it is just as happy articulating throaty punk barks as it is banshee wails and everything in between, leaving plenty of room for subtle melodic inflections by way of contrast to the moments of heightened intensity.
All this makes for a truly ridiculous experience. Across its nearly forty minute runtime the tempo barely drops below 150bpm. The riffs maintain a fraught tension diluted only by their profound sense of purpose. Brief solos serve as signifiers of increasing dramatic stakes over idle showboating (although the chops are well and truly present here). Equally Jara’s vocals rarely let up, but her voice proves more than up to the challenge of providing some diversity, offering a tone, pitch, and intensity suited to each moment even within such a densely packed landscape.
‘Bestia Occulta’, for all its theatre, heroism, bombast, its operatic scope, is still an intimate work. It explicitly positions itself as “of” the underground, both in the rough-and-ready presentation and the completely unvarnished approach to composition. Each atomised moment may deal in pure adrenaline, power, will, but there is a more measured, macro intent guiding the hand of Letalis across this album. It overcomes whatever shortcomings it may have in terms of pacing and execution through sheer enthusiasm, the joy taken in the craft. It comes from a place of such blatant honesty that it is hard not to get carried away in the total joy on offer here. Each individual performance warrants special mention, but equally they all contribute to an experience that is more than the sum of these parts. Once again Chile is giving the rest of the metal world a run for its money in the metal world, a nation that shows no signs of letting up in this regard any time soon.
Order of Decay: Mortification Rites
Out 2nd June on Sentient Ruin
As death/doom continues its struggle to emerge from the long shadow of Incantation, Scotland’s Order of Decay point to one possible route. Make no mistake, this is still comfortably nestled within the comforting bosom of their New Jersey forebears, particularly the strained incrementalism of ‘Diabolical Conquest’ (the vocalist even sounds somewhat reminiscent of Daniel Corchado). But the devil’s in the details of ‘Mortification Rites’, with subtle gestures toward daylight via a latent triumphalism that may be hard to spot beneath the muscular despair pervading this album.
The production is suitably massive, mimicking the sonic cathedral-esque shapes of caverncore, but bucking this trend by actually attempting to retain the solidity and clarity of the riffs without relying solely on overbearing reverb. Guitars serve the dual function of providing walls of atmospheric gloom whilst articulating riffs and melodic structures of a distinctive character. Meaty drums sit beneath, solidifying the guts of this album with giant death knells of percussive doom. Order of Decay also work in elongated dark ambient interludes and some subtle keyboard layers atop the metallic instrumentation, bolstering the sense of theological despair with the use of minimalist church organs and choral tones.
Ultimately, this album merely gestures toward a route out of Incantation’s shadow. It adopts a similar strategy of overwhelming the listener with chromatic blasts of surplus information before slowing the tempo in order to work the themes through a laboured, protracted death via droning tritones and cyclical repetitions. Where they do point to something new for the death/doom format, it is through explicitly melodic, borderline bright refrains that hint at the epic in the peripheral. They also take a more traditional approach on some of these tracks by gradually building to a climax in the style of modern funeral doom. This is where the structure and dramatic stakes coalesce around the slow building of a theme at slower tempos, with each cycle adding new information. This is in stark contrast to bursting out of the gate with sheer chaos before dragging things down to a more considered rumination.
This album succeeds as an exercise in restraint, a virtue sadly lacking in many of Order of Decay’s peers. It leaves many questions unanswered as to how it intends to carry the style forward atop the modest foundations laid out here. But it warrants accolades for at least trying in this regard where others have refused.
Damim: World Turned Hell
Out 1st June on Church Road Records
The latest EP from UK death metal oddities Damim sees them supplement their eccentric brand of gothic tinged progressive death metal with a marked black metal influence. This has been a common vector of Damim’s many iterations over the years, particularly black metal of a markedly futurist mindset a-la Thorns, but here the marriage is made explicit, as rich melodic guitar leads and fluid tremolo picked riffs are deployed as link passages between the staccato punches of chugging death metal.
A mechanistic, uncluttered mix allows Damim to unfurl their unstoppable riff machine with little pomp and no ceremony, efficiently re-announcing their unique statement of intent in an increasingly cluttered landscape for Britdeath. Their blend of creatively technical/progressive death metal works in elements of playful melodic content which are in turn collided against the amorality of industrial. Vocals provide the emotional core, swinging between mid-range death metal rasps and gothic tinged clean crooning that lends all a sense of weighty despair.
Live versions of the two opening tracks from their last LP ‘A Fine Game of Nil’ round off this brief EP, demonstrative of the band’s tight delivery and fully realised vision. A welcome post-covid return to recorded material for Damim, one that leaves us primed for more material in the near future.
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