Review by Fran on January 20, 2024.

Culto Negro’s blackened thrash proposal is raw and oldschool but well executed, at least that’s how their first EP was recorded. For this release they opted for an even rawer production style which is fine by me (guitars sound even better on this release) but there’s some dissonance between the guitars in some riffs, like one of the two guitarists isn’t nailing the riff right. After this release one of the guitarists was fired, perhaps there’s some relation between those facts. This dirtier sound puts more black metal into the band’s tag and composition wise they exploited it too, for example they use more continuous blast beat sections like the ending of the first song but the main music themes are generally written over a double bass speed metal beat. In some way, the sketchy guitar tracks and the dirtier production overall gives the band a “live” feel which I also prefer but the sloppy guitar playing is just not convincing and probably the biggest flaw of the album in general, that it’s still not bad for a demo.

The album begins with noise from all the instruments and you can feel those huge guitars since then, drumming is super tight and vocals are sung over an unorthodox out of tempo style but are covered with such a wet delay that the echoes cover the lack of rhythm from the vocal lines, sounding like a fucking evil and devilish whisper. The vocal style is a high pitched shriek, so the hissing sound of consonants distorted by the delay is super harsh. The bass guitar is also distorted, finger picked round tone but the slight distortion they used on it helps it cut through the mix perfectly. Guitar leads sound amazing, there’s a Slayerish floyd rose solo on track 3 that really stands out and sounds killer.

Lyrics are very interesting, if you know spanish you can understand at least something in spite of the odd vocalization and the exaggerated effects. Some of the lines have really lots of impact individually, you don’t need to understand the full context to get the message... well thought lyrics. Despite its technical flaws I like this production better than the one on their previous effort, ironically. What I dislike are the little but heardable mistakes on some guitar tracks...

Rating: 7.8 out of 10