Review: Piah Mater – Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun

Style: progressive death metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Opeth, Swallow the Sun, In Mourning
Country: Brazil
Release date: 5 July 2024

Sound the alarms, and man your battle stations! The fated day is upon us. Opeth has returned to making death metal. I know they had (finally) figured out prog rock with In Cauda Venenum and that Mikael had all but promised the death growls were a thing of the past, but here we are. It’s 2024, and we’ve got new Old-peth to enjoy… Wait one second. I’m receiving new information as we speak. It would seem that Opeth‘s newest Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun wasn’t written by Opeth at all but is rather the third output of Brazilian death metallers Piah Mater. You could have fooled me!

In all honesty, the direct similarities between Opeth and Piah Mater, particularly on this new album, are rather sparse although admittedly glaring. Vocalist Luiz Felipe Netto’s low and open harshes would draw immediate Mikael Akerfeldt comparisons from even the most newbie Opeth enjoyer, and the long form composition style that the Brazilians employ is at best a first cousin to the style made popular in progressive death metal by Opeth’s early albums. Other than those similarities, and a few deja vu invoking riffs in tracks like “As Islands Sink” and “Terra Dois,” the style exercised by Piah Mater on Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun is no more derivative of Opeth than any other prog death album of the past twenty years, a marked change from the bands previous output.

The best element of this album is certainly its use of harmony. From the first moments of opener “As Islands Sink” to the much doomier “In Fringes”, the luscious vocal harmonies were always pleasing to my ear, elevating the engaging—if not exactly memorable—lead melodies towards something actually quite decent. This trend continued into the guitar production where, more often than not, a riff always consisted of both a fairly standard distortion sound as well as a more affected tone, be it by wah, fuzz, or some other pedal, that added resonant stereo texture to the mix. Other than Chevelle, I had yet to hear a band so often employ this technique to such success. Unfortunately, while the album has a stellar sound (other than lacking bass) in key moments, it was for the most part unable to stretch that quality over entire songs.

The main issue with Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun is its song structures, or structure rather. Other than the two interlude/irregular outro tracks, “Macaw’s Lament” and “Canicula,” respectively, each track follows the same essential formula. Begin with a vibrant and catchy guitar riff (that you may or may not have taken from Deliverance, Blackwater Park, or Ghost Reveries); once you get bored, meander into some proggism or another, preferably a mid-tempo exploration into some tonal anachronisms be they synths (“As Islands Sink”) or saxophones (“Fallow Garden”); eventually, build back up into that original riff to make it seem like the song had some contiguous throughline, and finally end with a pointless soundscape exercise that wipes the slate clean the next track’s foray along the same path. This sort of song structure works well once on an album; see “The Grand Conjuration” on the aforementioned Ghost Reveries—have we passed the point of too many Opeth comparisons—but it doesn’t work if it’s the only song structure used; when each song starts and ends at the same point, the album’s net distance traveled is zero.

The closer “Canicula” eschews the trend thankfully, making use of distinct female vocals, cello, and a lone acoustic guitar, that together surprisingly create the most somber and heavy tone found on the album. Although the track’s finale is not nearly as climactic enough for an album striving to such epic heights across its other songs, I do appreciate the effort of doing something different after so much of the same, even if it is too little too late.

So while Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun may sound like Opeth returning to its death metal roots at face value, it seems that Piah Mater have yet to capture the refinement that made Opeth’s golden era so great, let alone find a truly original sound of their own. Guess we’ll just have to wait until the next Wilderun release for more of that sweet sweet progressive death metal; it’ll probably be better than anything Opeth ever made anyways.

Recommended tracks: In Fringes, Terra Dois
You may also like: Wilderun, In Vain
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Code666 Records – Facebook

Piah Mater is:
– Luiz Felipe Netto (Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards, String Arrangements)
– Igor Meira (Guitars)
– Luan Moura (Bass)
– Pedro Mercier (Drums)
– Isadora Melo (Vocals on ‘Canícula’)
– Jørgen Munkeby (Saxophone on ‘Fallow Garden’)
– Marta Garrett (Backing Vocals on tracks 1, 2 & 5)
– Jassy Mumin Gabriel (Backing Vocals on track 1)
– Daniel Albuquerque (Viola on tracks 5 & 6)
– Ayran Nicodemo (Violin on tracks 4, 5 & 6)
– Damian Bolotin (Violin on tracks 5 & 6)
– Joe Zeitlin (Cello on tracks 4 & 6)
– Bruno Serroni (Cello on track 5)
– Yuri Vilar (Flute on track 6)
– Mafram do Maracanã (Percussion on track 6)