Cultura Tres - Rezando al Miedo

Written by Ulla Roschat.

Cover art from the painting "Day of Judgement" by Damian Michaels.

With Rezando Al Miedo the four piece Venezuelan band Cultura Tres present their third full length album.

I know and love their first two albums La Cura (2008) and El Mal del Bien (2011) very much and so I decided to go to a Cultura Tres concert about two months ago, shortly before the release of Rezando Al Miedo. I expected to have an entertaining evening, what happened instead..., four guys on a stage worked their bewitching charm on me and turned a simple music club into a magical place and I needed quite a time to disentangle myself from the spell they had cast upon me (it still lingers a bit). Long story short: It was a fucking great show and the more I was on edge for the new album.

Of course you can’t really compare a recorded album with the experience of a live show, but to my surprise and joy on Rezando Al Miedo I hear a lot of this magic that was in the show - the magic of not only creating music with a huge amount of passion and emotion, but also getting it conveyed into the listener’s heart and soul. Running the risk of spoiling the bottom line, I say this is the true beauty and power of this album.

Eight well written songs with intricate multi-layered structures and an enormous dynamic range of quiet passages and thunderous doom riffs are the base and frame on which Cultura Tres build and which they fill with their pretty individual blend of Sludge, Doom, psychedelic Rock, Blues, South American Folk, even Post Rock elements, drone sounds and whatnot.

They have a unique kind of using bent, blue notes and dissonances to create a special sense of hypnotic creepiness and alienation. Excellent musicianship, including the incredibly variable vocals that are able to express every shade of mood of sorrow, separation, hate anger,...is another feature that contributes to make this album the brilliant gem it is. The lyrics (most in English, two in Spanish) revolve around the European colonialism of South America, religious oppression, social indifference and selfishness.

And again, to retrieve the bottom line, the most intriguing thing about Rezando Al Miedo is the spellbinding emotional impact, embedded in the individual style, the tightly written songs and the band’s musical skills. I don’t know, but Culura Tres must have a special incantation that melts it all down into this breathtaking masterpiece.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Sunn O))) Monoliths and Opinions: Part II - ØØ Void

Written by Craig Hayes.

Self-proclaimed 'power ambient' duo Sunn O))) was formed by guitarist Stephen O’Malley and bassist Greg Anderson in the mid 90s, and since then, the band have explored the possibilities of sonic and emotional reward via thundering and increasingly more adventurous drones. Recently, Sunn O))) put their entire catalogue up on Bandcamp, and over the next few months I'm going to look at every release. Call it my 'Sunn O))) Monoliths and Opinions' project, or call it a fan biting off far more than he can chew. Whatever the case, here we go... unto the breach my friends; I hope to see you on the other side.


Sunn O)))'s 2000 release, ØØ Void, set the band's roots firmly in the fertile soil they would subsequently till. It represents a significant artistic step for Sunn O))), seeing them adding more ritualized darkness to the substrata of doom found on The Grimmrobe Demos, and continuing their explorations into the physical properties of dark meditation. It's all a downtempo dive into sonic purgation and punishment, the mix of the two granting the choice of transcending or cowering.

When ØØ Void was re-released by Southern Lord in 2012--and I reviewed it elsewhere--I mentioned I was reading H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror, and that the story captured ØØ Void's menace perfectly. Lovecraft's words, "black gulfs of essence and entity that stretch like titan phantasms beyond all spheres of force and matter, space and time," essentially summed up ØØ Void, or at least offered a chilling glimpse into its nucleus.

Photo by Carmelo Española.

Bassist G. Stuart Dahlquist, violinist Petra Haden and vocalist Pete Stahl were all brought on board for the album, which was produced by former Kyuss bassist, Scott Reeder. "Richard", "NN O)))", "Rabbits Revenge" and "Ra at Dusk" were all triturating tunes with subterranean, bowel-boiling tones that ignored any rhythm in favor of repetitious, meditative effect. Sunn O))) combined a brutal metal viewpoint (geologically shattering tones, eerie themes) with an experimental perspective (using the physical properties of sound to induce trances, terrors and ecstasies), and that amalgamation of the abstract and practical set them on the path to finding fans from the world of metal and the avant-garde.

These days, Sunn O)))'s position at the nexus where metal and experimental music meet is well established. However, ØØ Void built a bridgehead where two schools of thought could meet--schools that shared certain methodologies on occasion, but were still cautious of each other. The ramifications have been enormously productive in creative terms, with ØØ Void's influence seeing artists from metal and avant-garde circles constructing edifices of sound that openly pillage and amalgamate elements from each other’s genres.

Photo by Carmelo Española.

In that sense, ØØ Void is the perfect doorway into Sunn O)))'s world. Open it up, and you'll find dirges, dissonance, and mesmerizing riffing, all building and building, and layering and layering, till catharsis (ie, points to gasp a breath) are exposed. But that's not all you'll find. You'll also see the first evidence of Sunn O))) breaking down a barrier between unconventional art and metal, where metal was finally able to gain a firmer foothold in a realm so often disposed to misjudging the genre. In other words, ØØ Void is essentially a gigantic ‘fuck you’ to those who've dismissed metal's artistic value, or its intelligence.

ØØ Void is, undeniably, a challenging experience for those unexposed to glacial-paced songs as downtuned and disharmonic, but riding the waves of riffing therein is pure bliss. Admittedly, there's probably something a little masochistic in that, but then, every work of Sunn O)))'s contains a nod to the disreputable power of filthy rock 'n' roll--even if it happens to move at a continent-shifting pace.

Lovecraft said it best: "wild orgiastic prayers … answered by loud cracklings and rumblings…" That's ØØ Void, and that's Sunn O))) as a whole.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

The Sunn O))) Monoliths and Opinions series.

Process of Guilt - Fæmin

Review by Aaron Sullivan.

Artwork by Hugo Santos

If I had to pick one thing that connects a majority of the music I enjoy it would be atmosphere. For me it is everything. And the darker the better. Portugal’s Process of Guilt have done just that with their album Fæmin.

Each song is a hypnotic dirge slowly building to destruction. They start with a simple foundation and grow with each added layer. The shifts in each song never feel forced, they ebb and flow as natural as the tide. When they find a riff they play it over and over, pounding into your head until it submits and sways with the beat. The tribal style drumming is also a big help in achieving this. At times focusing more on toms and not over amplified crash cymbals. The production is great on this album. No one instrument dominates. Allowing the listener to take in the band as a collective whole and not as individuals. Vocals are of the hardcore variety for the most part with the occasional clean singing thrown in for change of pace.

When it comes to Atmospheric Sludge not too many do it as well as Neurosis. But upon hearing Fæmin from Portugal’s Process of Guilt, I think a challenger has arrived.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]