Beats and yelling: Cóndor

Aurë Entuluva
Out 27th November on La Caverna Records

It’s been a while for Cóndor, but I feel that with album number five this Colombian outfit have finally made a listener friendly album. Cóndor articulate a form of ambient metal with tools normally associated with melodic death/doom. A liminal, veiled quality cloaks the music, as if walking through a dream or some collective memory of the distant past. This vision runs like a thread through Cóndor’s entire body of work, but previously it has existed in tension with the demo quality production, which sometimes aides the peripheral, uncanny half life of the music, other times the razor sharp melodies and longform narrative compositions have had to fight to reach above the parapet of a rehearsal room aesthetic. Things haven’t improved much in the production department for ‘Aurë Entuluva’, but it feels like vision and means have achieved a more effective union here, allowing us to take in the experience on a preconscious level free of distracting deliberation on the mechanics.

Although there is an obvious Candlemass influence alongside early Nordic death metal via Amorphis and plenty of folk flourishes, spiritually this sits closer to the fantastical naturalism of Summoning or early Enslaved. The pieces function narratively, in that there is a clear sense of journey from one point to the next. But there is also a timeless quality permeating the atmosphere, one can get lost in the bowels of the music and simply take in the environment independently of the strong dynamics of composition. And much like Summoning, it’s “a world we have never visited yet somehow miss”.

Cóndor’s use of the guitar is atypical for metal, calling to mind the proto contrapuntal gymnastics of something like ‘The Red in the Sky is Ours’. ‘Aurë Entuluva’ was recorded with three guitarists, and it really shows. Whilst there are plenty of riffs scattered throughout, there is a clear attempt to knit a more baroque style thread of interweaving lines that occasional link up into soaring harmonies. The topography rises and falls like the sloping contours of a mountainous wilderness, only to coalesce into a more rigid, formal flow of neoclassical lines that seem to signal moments of transition within these considerably lengthy pieces.

In this regard, drums are perhaps the most traditionally metallic element of this album. Sticking with a creative array of patterns and fills befitting of our expectations of doom metal drumming more broadly. This anchors the music with an aggressive underbelly, retaining a sense of threat and jeopardy to offset the oftentimes wistful, almost naïve lyricism of the melodic lines. Alongside this the harsh, unfiltered distorted vocals inject an animalist aggression, reminding us that for all the meditative wonder the natural world instils in us, it is still a desperately dangerous place.

This is why, despite the album’s unfiltered presentation contrasting with today’s norm of polished studio quality production, it remains philosophically heavier than the vast majority of populist metal covered in what’s left of the metal press. Cóndor are masters of drawing the listener in, of evoking a certain mindset, only to cycle it through peaks and troughs of euphoria and despair. There is a gravitas and sense of occasion to these pieces, something that – although always present – didn’t quite come through on earlier albums owing to various weaknesses in the final mix.

Albums such as this are a stark reminder that we have only just begun to unpack the potential of metal. With enough time, attention, and indeed research, it is possible to develop the compositional form of metal qua metal. ‘Aurë Entuluva’ is just the latest chapter in metal’s long marriage to classical (particularly baroque) and folk traditions. But it also feels like it has opened the door of possibility within this relationship wider than it’s been for some years. Cóndor use the same raw materials as any other metal band. But where so many land with formulaic, by-the-numbers restatements of older ideas, there is an attention to detail that imbues these compositions with weight, it lets us know that we are witnessing something of substance, a statement of significance that instantly marks it out. And in turn, Cóndor have cemented their position within the lexicon of “deep” metal, artists that leverage its language and norms at a more profound level, transcending the limitations of genre in the process.