Fuego Eterno – El Arte De Lo Oculto Review

Hailing from the city of Los Ángeles, Fuego Eterno are bringing some absolutely ripping death/thrash on their first release. Their debut album, El Arte De Lo Oculto, was released independently this past January.

This may seem like the basic set-up for any review, but a few things need to be clarified first:

1. By “Los Ángeles,” we mean the capital of the province of Bío Bío, Chile, and not the Californian home of the likes of Ratt or Guns ‘n’ Roses. Los Ángeles is comprised of about 167,000 residents, is known for being the childhood home of author Roberto Bolaño, and has an average temperature that doesn’t reach over 71 degrees Fahrenheit and overall sounds like a nice place to live, at least climate-wise.
2. By “El Arte De Lo Oculto,” we mean the first album by Fuego Eterno and not, in fact, El Arte De Lo Oculto: Prácticas Mágico-Esotéricas En “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” by Cuban literary scholar and critic Frederick A. De Armas. However, somewhat relatedly, his works tend to focus on a comparative perspective between astrology, Hermeticism, mythology, and culture, so that’s pretty neat.
3. By “Fuego Eterno,” we mean the death/thrash band from the aforementioned Los Ángeles, whom, if you’ll recall, released an album entitled El Arte De Lo Oculto just this past January. We are not, in fact, referring to Fuego Eterno, the 1994 album by Texas band Intocable, who are, aside from being a staple act in their genre, known for suffering through a tragic van accident in which only one rider in the van survived because he was wearing his seatbelt**, as well as for being the first band of the Regional Mexican music genre to play the Dallas Cowboys stadium. I checked out their album as well, and actually kinda liked it. But that’s not why we’re here. This is why we’re here:

An altar is cast around the bass at the onset of the El Arte De Oculto opener, “Hipnosis.” The drums begin to work their way in as the guitar is conjured in a wash of psychedelical mind-bending tremolos that swirl around in a searing wah-wah. The tempo drops into a doom groove – while the tones don’t quite match up, there is certainly a bit of a stoner doom sensibility to the guitar work. However, instead of a hazy, fuzz-laden drenching of sound, the guitar is possessed by the edge of a gleamingly sharp razor. The song is strange – this doesn’t feel quite like a thrash record at the onset, but Fuego Eterno have plenty of tricks up their sleeve yet. The song essentially serves as a seven-minute-long invocation of the sounds the band will be playing with once the album really starts cooking beneath the eternal flames of a ritual bonfire. It’s as though Fuego Eternal are conjuring the very tools they need to complete the intense work before them from a far-away realm. The psychedelia is heavy – the band are just beginning to take the listener into their bizarre occult world, forcefully ripping open the third eye of those who dare press play…

…and then jab a gnarled and twisted middle finger right into their spiritual cornea at the onslaught of “Sumergidos En El Placer Y El Dolor (Immersed In Pleasure And Pain).” One run of the riff and a screaming dive of a lead and the song is off and running. Now we’re thrashin’, baby, and it was every bit worth the wait. The interplay between the guitar riffs and the rhythm section relies heavily on tried-and-true tricks like running the kicks after a brisk d-beat, or falling into a palm-muted half-time breakdown mid-song. The vocals are a gruff bark teetering just on that line between hyper-aggressive thrash and death metal proper, occasionally lifting to a delightfully horrific shriek to drive home the point. The guitar solos add maximum punctuation to the tracks; it’s as though Fuego Eterno are setting their incredibly intricate logo ablaze in a trail of diesel as the widdly-widdly’s ignite the fuel splattered across the songs in a wildfire of thrash-addled mania. It only further accentuates the power of the riffing on tracks like “Destrucción Del Condicionamiento (Destruction Of Conditioning)” – where the song breaks out into a rebellious punk-n-roll fury that offsets the aggression with a bit of pure-spirited fun and some serious lickage in the leads department.

“Dios Hizo La Carne, Pero El Diablo Al Carnicero (God Made The Meat, But The Devil Made The Butcher)”*** serves as a bit of a centerpiece to El Arte De Lo Oculto: It’s the magnum opus at the eye of the hurricane of thrash metal chaos; it’s where all the best elements of the band are brought into play. The forward gallop at the start of the song sits right on that line between aggressive death and hyperactive speed. When the vocals hit over the detuned chugging, they nail a viciousness punctuated by the piercing wails of a vocalist sounding like they are being stabbed in the leg with a rusted ten-inch Bowie knife. The song fades early into a throbbing tom beat as liquid psychedelic guitar bubbles in the background. A mid-tempo section emerges, accompanied by feminine backing vocals: It’s a new element for the band that marks something special like an ashen blessing crudely smudged across the forehead. The way Fuego Eterno shift and dive between these mystical breakouts and intensive-yet-catchy thrash riffing is truly what makes them stand out: This band is cooking up some bizarre, wormwood-and-peyote laced heavy metal intensity. The center of the song trudges into a doom stupor, as though the intensive smoke of burning herbs is becoming overwhelming and disorienting. Everything slows to a crawl and begins distorting and shifting form. Yet what truly makes the song is its ending: A breakout riff rears its battle-hardened head, providing a clear vision through the haze and charging forward with the accompaniment of a veracious gallop from the rhythm section. It morphs into a running kick-fueled intensity that, in a way, draws parallels to the spirit of true metal of death à la The Chasm – it’s not hard to imagine guitarist Gabriel Calfupàn and bassist Carlos Renfige trading off KISS-styled stage antics taken to a level of eleven in a live setting. Need I say more at this point?

The following track, “El Arte De Lo Oculto,” pulls from the punkier side of thrash, striking swiftly in tri-power chord assault complete with the “Boogie Woogie” key drop to add a sense of rock ‘n’ roll energy to the mix. The Spanish tongue of the band really stands out and bites with an intensity rarely found outside the ever-devoted South American scene. The song breaks down and devolves into a bit of a bass spotlight, again playing on hallucinogenic soundscapes behind the distorted chunk of rhythm. Emerging out of nowhere, a twin-lead build swings 10,000 tons of Iron Maiden into the nads before bursting into a flurrious whirlwind solo section that further explores the band’s ever-pleasing use of the wah-wah pedal hinted at earlier at the introduction of the album with “Hipnosis.” Everything about the record is so well-timed; and it’s paced methodically without ever losing the chaotic spirit of thrash or the unexpected twists of psychedelia – again evidenced at the opening to the closing track, “Al Borde Del Abismo.” The atmosphere of such doomier sections calls to mind the oddness of Mystifier. While it would be ludicrous to compare the band’s core sound to the Brazilian black metal legends, there is something about the mystical, narcotic-fueled, bizzaro-occult mind warp take on heavy metal to Fuego Eterno’s approach that brings their fellow South Americans to mind, even if it isn’t an intentional homage and moreso a display of the mysticism embedded in the soul of the continent itself.

El Arte De Lo Oculto is one hell of an impressive debut, with extra kudos given for finding a new twist to a tried-and-true method of an otherwise ripping riff-laden death/thrash assault. The album would certainly rule on its own, but the extra touches given to creating a psychedelic feel simply glare with a creative spirit that is begging to be further explored. I’m wanting to see what this band can really do: All hail thrashcid death, and hails to Fuego Eterno for Doing The Damn Thing™ with El Arte De Lo Oculto.

*Author’s note: While the album is not currently available for purchase on Bandcamp or physically outside of Chile, it is, in fact, streaming on Spotify and Apple Music – check it out and show some support so we can get this in formats everywhere, please. I assure you, it rules.

**Also, please wear a seatbelt.

***How sick is that song title?!