By Jonny Bakes
When you think of Spain, you think of sunshine, sangria, Brits on tour and matadors…and when you think of black metal you think of grim and frostbitten wastelands. But what if I were to tell you that Spain has become a real hotbed (no pun intended) for black metal? With more than 600 metal bands hailing from the Brits’ favourite holiday destination (according to Encyclopedia Metallium anyway), there’s clearly something dark and mysterious in that sangria!
This brings me nicely onto Calyx, who just so happen to be a black metal band from Spain (see how I linked that together there?) with their debut full length album ‘Vientos Arcaicos’, or ‘Archaic Winds’ to those who don’t speak Spanish. ‘Vientos Arcaicos’ follows a series of three demos released between 2014 and 2017 and heralds a real maturation in their sound which, for this outing, has been billed as medieval black metal.
This has exactly what you would want from a black metal album really – blast beats, harsh vocals and distorted guitars, but with a twist of some medieval sounding elements. It makes for a pretty impressive debut, with plenty of changes in song structure to keep things interesting throughout.
The album opens with the aptly named instrumental track, ‘Intro’, which pairs marching band style drum rolls with a gentle guitar riff which sounds, you guessed it, medieval. This is there to lull you in before it launches straight into the fast and heavy ‘La Vengaza de Las Brujas’ (‘The Witches’ Revenge’). Without spending all night translating all of the Spanish lyrics into English, I’d say that the song titles alone show that the themes are pretty similar to those commonly seen in this genre! This is a very varied track with frequent transitions from fast shredding to more melodic riffs that have a bit of a Sabbath tint to them.
Following this is the relentless ‘Asedio Infernal’ (‘Infernal Siege’) and it feels just like that, an infernal siege! This track is fast and heavy, and sometimes it changes to being heavy and fast just to give you a bit of a rest! I’d say it almost has a punky feel here, similar to Gehennah. In fact, the drum track here makes my wrists hurt and legs ache just listening to it!
The title track ‘Vientos Arcaicos’ opens up with howling winds and a deep fuzzy bass line before it hits you in the face with some brutal blast beats and screams from Ator Humungus. This breaks part way through for a brief reprieve with a short guitar melody, before proceeding to hit you right in the face again.
‘Basque Muerto’ manages to convey a real evil aura which is perfect for a track that translates as ‘Dead Forest’. This sounds like you’ve stumbled across a remote clearing on a cloudy night to find a group of people in black hooded cloaks performing ritual sacrifice. That’s the best way I can describe this and if you wish to find out what that sounds like for yourself, I suggest you give this a listen.
Overall, I’d say that there’s certainly enough to get excited about with this debut album from Calyx and it will likely be one that gets some regular listening from me! Hope to see more to come from these guys in the future.
- ‘Vientos Arcaicos’ is released today (Friday 17 May). You can get your copy HERE.
www.facebook.com/Calyx-1598718247050568/
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