This matters little, really, for what transpires over two very long tracks and a brief interlude needs no framing, evolving as it does rather on its own – at times rather arbitrary, and others plodding – which is not to say that the album taken as a whole does not portend things on the doom-y side of the acoustic spectrum. On the contrary, the various references to pagan ritualism and the occult, in general, are something akin to proof of admission, the pentagram on your hand, a stamp of belonging.

 

The larger issue is that there is, strictly speaking, nothing that is either sacred or pagan. Either it’s all sacred or all pagan, not really much room for interpretation when talking about sounds, which are as indifferent to human desire as a tree or a rock. Sure, there are shrieks and growls and the usual dark stuff across “Ruptura-afuera”, the final cut of the album, but nothing individually that we haven’t heard before. Originality and a completely new sonic palette is not necessarily every band’s wish, and the stringed dirge that opens into tribal drumming – in circular patterns, no less – is altogether creepy and unsettling on its own once we reach the final minutes. Light is being snuffed out, along with any hope that things might shipwreck on the melodic banks of the musical river. When things end, they are simply over, because there is nothing left to poison and uproot. Yikes!

 

For fans of atonal, crushing, rapturous mayhem, and the Spanish collective’s previous material.