Label: Independent
Date: January 19th, 2024
Chile has the longest border with Argentina. This is the second largest and very prominent (not only on the field of football or volleyball as I know) country of South America. At the same time this is the one whose metal scene is, for some mysterious reason, one of the worse known ones outside the continent. I always wondered why the hell it’s like that. Why does every metalhead know at least a few Brazilian bands and almost no one knows even one Argentinian one, even if some of them have existed since eighteen? Reason absolutely isn’t music itself – that’s for sure! This isn’t also a question of not too huge a scene. Anyways, we’ll move just there now for a while to make up at least a little of this oversight. Of course most of the ensembles come from the capital city Buenos Aires. There’s nothing strange in that, because this is the most populous city in the country (and one of the biggest ones in all of Latin America). But bands who play interesting music come even from relatively small towns like El Bolsón.
In 2011 Arkham was created. More or less three years later their debut demo saw the light of the day it started to circulate on the internet. Then some more stuff, including the debut full-length “Sons of Death”, came. Some kind of curiosity, in my opinion quite sad from some point of view, is the fact all of them were released indefinitely in digital forms. And the same is with second album “Memoria” released January, the 19th. We have here eight tracks which takes a little more (nine seconds) then forty one minutes. And here’s one more evidence for the thesis “death metal has many faces”. There’s no doubt our Argentinian friends present pure Death Metal, but this is something different, maybe even somehow totally, then Hail Caligula or even Infernal Thorns. What we have to do here is more melodic in conventional meaning creativity. But at the same time guys absolutely don’t forget what is the most important component of death metal and personally I’d never use the adjective Melodic to describe their music. Melody created first of all by guitars plays a huge role, but this is still only a tool. Besides, maybe this is one more proof I know nothing about the thing, I don’t associate this kind of growling to melodic death metal.
Generally guys still play brutal music, old school one definitely. Riffs are quite broken ones and of course variable as well, but also sharp – at least sometimes. I mean, this is as clear as a day we listen to death metal, but the fascination of thrash is well hearable, too. You find here some, mostly quite subtle, changes of tempo. This is the middle one, but from time to time guys show their claws.
Songs’ structure is quite developed and this is music where a lot from technical point of view. But just like I said (wrote) before, guys serve it in an easy-going form. That’s why I can guarantee you’ll listen to “Memoria” with huge pleasure and even don’t notice when these forty minutes have passed. And probably it’ll be with you just like with me – after the very last sound I desire to listen to this album from the beginning.once again and then once again. I’m also somehow sure at least some of you will wanna (just like me) get to know their other stuff. I also hope there’ll be some label who’ll be interested to release “Memoria” (and as for me the best other stuff, too) on CD or tape. I know, I know… Times changed. But I know one more thing. My experience shows metalheads in general, even if that’s not as strong in younger generations, are about physical copies. And even if digital ones have its pluses (you’d probably never got to know this and quite many of other ensembles if not this way) I still feel this is for many bands a way to catch not only fans all over the world, but also to find a label.
