Genres: Black metal, crust punk (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: His Hero is Gone, Ictus
Country: Spain
Release date: 5 January 2024
Alex CF is one of my favorite figures inside the metal-adjacent sphere for a reason. Across his billion musical projects, he did the unthinkable; he made crust punk an interesting genre. Now I know all three of the crust punk fans who read this blog are gonna come after me, but hear me out. I am a prog guy; I crave musical ambition. Crust punk doesn’t do much for me. But when you throw in a violin, cello, and a science fiction concept into the mix that runs across three albums, now things start to become interesting. This is my one chance, so go listen to Morrow’s three albums, they’re genuinely the best bits of crust punk I’ve ever heard.
But Alex CF is merely one man who dares to innovate on crust punk, and his influence on the genre is undeniable. Ictus is another favorite of mine for daring to mix melodeath and crust, and His Hero is Gone is undeniably an influence on Alex CF by bringing sludge metal into the mix. When a band that labels themselves as crust punk reaches out to a prog music blog to review their new album, I can’t help but be the slightest bit fascinated.
Surprisingly, Svdestada doesn’t sound anything like the typical crust band. The first thing I noticed upon hearing opener ‘Nudo’ was that the black metal influence far outweighed any bit of crust punk that I heard. The song fit into a 2 minute-punk-friendly form factor, but the riffing was genuinely creative and surprisingly melodic. The production is crisp and clear, but doesn’t feel squeaky clean. This wasn’t the average black metal-inspired crust punk band.
‘Cierzo’ starts in a more punk-flavored fashion and quickly evolves into melodic tremolo picking in the song’s climax while ‘Amargor’ fully embraces the black metal style. Dissonant arpeggios ring across the song and is clearly a favorite technique of the band’s guitarist Fernando Lamattina as they appear on multiple songs. Despite all the dissonance and aggression, there’s a surprising amount of beauty and melody on Candela. Once again, relating this back to the thing I loved about Morrow, Svdestada aren’t constraining themselves to the boundaries of the genre, daring to innovate further.
However, some of that innovation can be the album’s downfall. Like all crust punk, this album is packed into a nice, neat thirty-three minutes although one song takes up roughly a third of that runtime. With banger after banger preceding the nearly twelve minute closer, I was cautiously optimistic…and unfortunately let down. ‘Candela’ starts out guns blazing. It shows the band at their most pissed off, but that’s much to the song’s detriment. There is a very short lull around the five-to-seven-minute mark before exploding back into a beautiful tremolo riff, but by that point, the song feels like it has overstayed its welcome. If the song were to be cut down to around seven or eight minutes, I feel that my opinion of the closer would be much higher.
Calling the closer a dealbreaker might be the wrong word here. I will most likely keep coming back to Candela when I need my fix of blackened aggression. There is a lot to love about this album, especially for a relatively young band. They are surely one of the more creative forces in crust punk I’ve heard, and I hope to see them progress into making something truly incredible in the future.
Recommended tracks: Nudo, Amargor
You may also like: Fall of Efrafa, Morrow
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
Svdestada is:
– Jorge Urosa (bass)
– Fernando Lamattina (guitars)
– Mario C. Vasies (vocals)
– Eder de la Camera (drums)
0 Comments