Orthodox, Baal: The March Continues
Posted in Reviews on June 2nd, 2011 by H.P. Taskmaster
With three massively varied full-lengths already under their collective belt, be-robed Andalusian doom trio Orthodox return with the follow-up to 2009’s Sentencia in the form of Baal. Baal, released like its predecessor through Spanish imprint Alone Records, is comprised of five tracks that follow the band’s charted course of morose exploration, but find them bringing some crunch into their dirges. Where Sentencia had a medieval, blackly-plagued vibe to it, Baal is more directly doomed, though you might not know it from the near-six-minute instrumental opener, “Alto Padre,” which sets a tone of the kind of free jazz ethic Orthodox has been incorporating into their sound since their 2006 debut, Gran Poder. What remains most consistent about Orthodox on Baal is the band’s ability to affect a mood and their truly open creative sensibility. As much as they’re within the doom genre, they’re almost never limited by it, and from bassist Marco Serrato Gallardo’s victorious vocal warble on “Taurus” to the recklessly rhythmic drive of “Hanin Ba’al,” it seems Orthodox could go anywhere at any moment and be able to pull something coherent out of it.
That’s no easy feat when you’re working with this kind of sonic breadth. With just three members in the band – Gallardo is joined as ever by guitarist Ricardo Jimenez Gómez and drummer Borja Diaz Vera – Orthodox manage to completely set an atmosphere both expansive and encompassing, despite a traditionally doomed, spacious feel in the songs. Gómez’s layers of guitar on “Alto Padre” strum and ring freely while Vera rolls on his toms behind, leaving Gallardo to thicken and fill out the song on bass. It’s hard to tell from there where Orthodox might be going with Baal – at least hard to tell correctly – and it’s as though they’re leading from Sentencia directly into this newer material, leaving it up to the first track here to provide the transition from one to the next. If we take “Taurus,” then as the beginning of Baal proper, it’s a lumbering and thoroughly doom face that Orthodox are presenting on their latest work. Gallardo would seem to lead the charge with open bass notes ringing through the breaks and vocals that march as much as they do anything else, but Gómez soon injects one of Baal’s several killer solos and makes his presence known that way. Over time, the members of Orthodox have clearly gotten more comfortable with each other as players, and their interaction is the key to making Baal a success. They never sacrifice artistry or dumb down their playing style to highlight a riff, but neither do they fail to pay homage to the heaviness that was doubtless the impetus behind forming the band in the first place.
Back in December, I placed an order at the Alone Records online distro. They were (and 
Abramis Brama, När Tystnaden Lagt Sig…
njoyed albums from both bands in the past couple months. There were a couple names I remember from a while ago — Mississippi Sludge, Ridge, Duster 69 — that I figured I’d get just for the hell of it. The Ridge was cool in a Fu Manchu vein, the Mississippi Sludge didn’t match the awesomeness of its cover at all, and Duster 69 was heaviest perhaps in its accent, so I guess that batch kind of had its ups and downs.
Whereas much of the movement in the last several years of heavy psychedelic rock has been toward the more freeform, jamming style of bands like Earthless and Naam, the Vitoria-Gasteiz collective The Soulbreaker Company from the north of Spain present an incredibly tight-wound vision of what space-leaning psych can be on their second Alone Records full-length, Itaca. The six-piece (plus guests) band run through a wide array of sonic motifs, from the jazzy synth-prog of opener “It’s Dirt,” to the Doors-y feel of the ending movement of “Sandstorm,” always maintaining control, always sounding full. Never a hair out of place, so to speak. It’s an accomplishment mostly in the complexity of the song arrangements – I know of plenty two-piece bands who can’t get to the point of togetherness The Soulbreaker Company have with up to eight or nine people on a single track.
Fresh off last year’s three-way split with Lords of Bukkake and Sons of Bronson and single-track Lords of the Cave Worm full-length, Barcelona crushers Warchetype make their latest offering with the album Ancestral Cult of Divinity. Released, like their first two LPs, on Alone Records, the six-cut Ancestral Cult of Divinity showcases the kind of self-awareness you might expect in modern traditional doom, owing much of its sound to a darker interpretation of The Obsessed with nods to Trouble, Candlemass, Saint Vitus and Black Sabbath along the way, but Warchetype don’t shy away from displaying a heavier, death metal influence. This is a big part of what distinguishes them from the legends by whom they’re inspired, and given a long European history for pioneering death/doom, the five-piece is by no means out of line with a slew of preceding acts.
Though it follows an intro with the closest thing to the guitar sound on Clutch’s now-classic Elephant Riders I’ve ever heard without actually listening to that album, that turns out to be just one of the many sonic avenues explored on the Spanish trio Cuzo’s second album for Alone Records, Otros Mundos. Taking ‘70s prog jam excursions and roughing them up tonally to achieve a kind of garage jazz, the three-piece has undergone several changes in the time since their debut, Amor y Muerte en la Tercera Fase, most notably exchanging bassist Iván Román for Alvaro Gallego, bringing the number of shared members between Cuzo and doomers Warchetype down a third to just drummer Pep Cervantes. Cervantes and guitarist Jaume Pantaleon explored a variety of instrumental personalities on the first album, and joined here by Gallego, is as though they’re even freer to pursue whatever the moment offers.
It’s a well-known fact that when you begin a sentence with “When you think about it…” whatever you say afterwards is immediately lent credence. Someone out there is going to say, “You know, that’s right.” So:
mailorder of Spanish label Alone Records and come out of it on the positive side of the equation. Not financially, of course, but existentially.
If we happened to live in a dimension in which there was one phrase to cover the entirety of what Barcelona instrumentalists Cuzo are doing on their Alone Records debut, Amor y Muerte en la Tercera Fase, that phrase might be something like “vague rock.” The experimental trio comprised of bassist Iv?n Rom?n, drummer Pep Cervante (both of doomers Warchetype) and guitarist/noisemaker Jaime L. Pantale?n run through seven 
mostly-interconnected tracks of instru-prog, like what Stinking Lizaveta might try if they decided they weren’t a jazz band or a more organic, less keyboard-driven Zombi.
Spanish space rock trio B?iruth coincidentally came to my attention only a few short days after I happened upon a copy of Fooz‘s Space is Dark…it is so Endless 
El P?ramo hablan del desierto. Actually, they don’t “hablan” (or whatever the correct verb form is; apologies for my ignorance of the beautiful Spanish language) at all, they’re instrumental. But musically, their free-flowing jams and Colour Hazey tones point the way to wind-carved dunes that stretch for miles. The Madrid four-piece, whose name translates to The Wasteland, offer a simple take on desert rock but don’t go as far as ripping anyone off. Their influences are easily discernable — Colour Haze and Kyuss being principle — but the seven tracks on their Alone Records self-titled debut boast a warmth and character that’s all their own.
