MANDRAGORA MALEVOLA - Awakening the Impvre
Self Released
I am astounded, seriously I am, of the amount of unsigned bands whose creative talent in the extreme matters equals or surpasses many bands that labels shove at us to consume. Case in point here we have a two piece act from Portuguese whose debut full length delves into everything blackened death has to offer and adds various touches of harmony both in song structure as well as instrumentation.
This two piece act consists of Slade Von Kaos, formerly of the band TRIBA, who performs the vocals and Ignifervm, who I believe is still in two other Portuguise bands CARMA and EVERTO SIGNUM, and is responsible for all the instrumentation. Which aside from the obvious metal related instruments also includes acoustic guitar and keyboards. Prior to this they put out a demo in 2015 titled Black Flame ov Illumination which was probably a testing of the waters so to speak to see how successful if anything more would occur. Obviously it did.
Awakening the Impvre falls into the category of a blackened death opus as well as story telling concept album inspired by the biblical Cain, the first man to kill. The eleven cuts on here span a variety of tempos and fluxes with the usual electrical fuse buzz of blackened tremolo guitar riffs, blast-beat runs and Von Kaos' vocals which range from harsh shrieks to guttural barks of malevolence. The key to this whole release is it's flow which is not on repeat between songs. Instead of neck breaking changes in structure this duo keeps the pace smooth throughout. Good songwriting can have your face ripping off at one moment while next sopping up the blood with a keyboard interlude.
Like I mentioned in my opening paragraph, there are plenty of metal record labels who profess to be progressive minded or forward thinking (a term I really despise) with their releases. And yet they pour out unlistenable pap. Here we have a band whose release not only captures the extreme elements of the blackened death genre but adds to it in ways that make it beautiful as well as wanting it as a destination for repeated listens which I've been doing all weekend. Late Sunday was the coolest.
http://www.facebook.com/mandragora.malevola
http://mandragoramalevola.bandcamp.com/releases
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