When I stumbled across Fuego Eterno’s debut album, I likened it to a Spanish-speaking Deceased on a heavy diet of marijuana, mushrooms, and perhaps a few nights in a peyote lodge. El Arte De Lo Oculto found an odd balance between melodic death/thrash, hyper-aggressive punk, and good ol’ rock ‘ roll–all with an undertone of distorted psychedelia that felt like it worked so well on accident. By that I mean I’m not sure if there was a direct and cohesive intent behind its creation and the final product, but the band simply gelled their influences together in a way that made it more than the sum of its parts that ignited the album like a chemical fire.
While El Arte took a bit more of a smouldering start with the slower-paced “Hipnosis,” Trance goes straight for the throat with “El Caos Rige,” The leads quickly devolve into some kind of Voivodian electro-assault, and from there it’s riff-a-minute fury. The second it almost settles it gets a second kick in the keister, and then a third, followed by a fourth.
Whiplashing through a million riffs is a risky move, and it does feel like some of the songwriting that made the debut so good has been cast aside. Looking at the final product, however, it’s a pretty even trade. The sophomore release is a bit more dense and difficult to digest the first time it rushes into the veins, but it’s a ride that grows more and more fruitful as you learn to ride the crest of its flames. Hans’ vocals have gotten raspier and more intense, spitting rapid fire Spanish fury as he annihilates his vocal chords with a jagged cheese grater. The hoarse black metal wails that remind me a bit of Silencer or early Helheim sneak their way in between the growling rasps (see the ending to “Suicidio En La Tierra Prometida” for a prime example). While he doesn’t have the range to fully go to those or guttural death growls, he keeps things interesting by flirting between the edges of both. It works great with the thrashy style of the band and adds a welcome dose of color to a department that is often more of an afterthought in contemporary thrash and death metal.
The musicianship really sells the album, with the guitars weaving between each other as the bass finds its own lines of melody to complement them. The bass tone is so distorted and pleasantly crunchy, just follow it as “Fuego Eternal” plays out like an acid trip in a commercial dumpster (complimentary). Across the album, the parts are always moving and weaving, bobbing and dipping. A few times it does become a little much (Ever done cocaine? That sort of thing tends to happen.) but the band somehow manage to wrassle it back to some form of linear stability. It’s just fucking ballsy the way they throw it all on the line.
While I very much miss the stellar cover art of Sonia Jimenez that first caught my for their debut, I’ve strangely come around to the weird red photoshop and pasted logo and text of Trance. It’s oddly fitting to the chaotic nature of the album, and a further testament to the thing Fuego Eterno are most concerned with: just shredding faces. Once again, the band have defied the sum of their parts and made one hell of an album–maybe it’s not an accident and the band have just found something that works and gives them their own style. I can’t think of many that do it quite like they do–not once does it feel like “oh here’s a Bathory riff” or “here’s a Megadeth riff.” No low-hanging fan service, no bullshit, no pandering, just pure metal fury from a heart about to go into a coca cardiac arrest!
$20 says I get flagged for another “random” drug test at work this month.
