Label: Self released
Date: January 15th, 2025
Well, I think it’s high time to once again visit underrated on metal map of Europe country. As I’ve written many times, and I’ll probably write many more times, I have no idea what this fact is based on. In fact, I’m not even sure if Spaniards themselves know the reasons for this state of affairs. Either way, this situation has always been going, and Spain is real terra incognita for many metalheads. That’s why before I start this review for good, I’ll write a few lines about the ensemble itself. Of course, I’ll try to do it in a nutshell, because my primary job is to present you closer “Absence”. Band was founded in 2011, but musicians have longer experience in playing several sub-genres of our beloved music. After couple of months, they debuted with self-titled demo and two years later released debut album entitled “Beyond the Ghost’s Pride”.
“Absence” is their fourth album, which saw daylight quite long ago – January 15th. Guys released it, just as their two first full-lengths, independently. This time it’s available only in the form of CD, as I know. But I’m more than sure that sooner or later there’ll be some label who wants it. This belief results from two facts. There’s probably no point in mentioning the first one, because it imposes itself and you don’t have to be Einstein to figure it out. Yes! This is about the quality of creativity. And what is the second fact I mean? Well, past practice indicates that. Both “Beyond…” and “Esentia” was released December 22nd, 2018, by Invasion of Solitude Records. So, why should it be otherwise in case of “Absence”? I mean, why shouldn’t there be any label interested in releasing this?
Especially that, as I wrote above – even if, as always, indirectly, these eleven songs taking almost (without twelve seconds) fifty-three minutes present good quality. Well, maybe they’re anything special, in meaning: changing the genre, but it doesn’t mean anything. This is still piece of solid music dedicated to people who like and appreciate quite huge element of melody in death metal. Of course, that’s about melody created by guitars – as far as I know guys never ever used keyboards as, let’s call it, permanent instrument. So, you absolutely don’t have to worry about some nauseating “sweetening”. This is pure death metal, and you find here all its attributes, everything what makes you can recognize this is such kind of music. And since readers of these words aren’t random individuals, I deeply doubt I need to even name all of them, not mentioned about analyzing or describing differences between melodic death metal and this, even if it’s not accurate word, more classic death metal. We all know how riffs, growling or even drumming should look like in such music, so writing about it would be a pure waste of time and energy. However, it wouldn’t hurt to let you know what, to so speak, branch of melodic death metal we’re dealing with here, I guess. Personally, I associate it not too much with Swedish, to be precise: Gothenburg, school of the genre. Of course, there are still some touches of that due to the fact this kind of playing death metal was born, at least for most of “average” (not sitting into the Underground) metalheads, right over there. But bands who cross my mind while listening to “Absence” are or were coming from Hispanic culture. Melodicism doesn’t drown out the brutal nature of this work for a moment.
Oh, I forgot to tell you that opening the album track is a quite long (one minute and fifty seconds) intro. So, also in this point, once every release just had to have intro – otherwise it was considered incomplete, ”Absence” is old-school stuff. To sum up, make a long story short. Write on address below or visit their profile on the portal with word “band” in its name and grab this CD!
Contact: mente_inminente@hotmail.com
