Tuesday, February 4, 2014

GUERRA TOTAL - Más allá de la tumba (2011)

Exterminio ritual or How to Mutilate the Goat
 
 
Mexican label American Line is a metal stronghold. Joel released many good and great underground records. But this time, something is broken, however I don’t treat Guerra Total’s “Más allá de la tumba” as the biggest mistake in metal world. This is my first meeting with this band and now I do not know if I want to hear the debut or the newest one from 2012. Musically they perform very popular (nowadays!) kind of metal, and describe their music as ‘black speed metal’. They are almost right, everything is deeply rooted in the eighties, but there is a need to add to their style simple thrash as well, you know, old Slayer, old Running Wild and so on. Even I started to write about unpleasant things, let’s focus on positive stuff. For sure one of the highlight is the work of rhythm guitars where Colombians show a potential, just take a listen to “Exterminio ritual”, the title track, “Tormento nuklear” or “I Am the Werewolf”. Sometimes played fast, sometimes slow which seems to be a better direction for the band. Though I heard those groups of riffs a million times, I think they really moved me straight into the magic of old times. Vocals are maintained rather in black way with very seldom eruptions of falsetto, good point for the band that some song are sung in Spanish, definitely better choice than English in this case. The rhythm section bravely follows the guitars, but with no any spectacular show, just an usual work…

Thus, it’s time to write about the worse side of the album, so let’s listen to the guitar leads carefully. The first one appears in the second song (the opening track is just an intro) about 1:16 played by Death Fiend of Haunted Graveyard & Black Bishop of the Undead. To put briefly, this is horrible! It is played in very chaotic way, but in the negative meaning of it. I can only feel some kind of sick cacophony supported by weak technique that completely ruins the song. Also sound realization of guitar leads should be mentioned here, cause it sounds like… keyboards! Awful! Unfortunately the similar scenario is present in other songs. And if the song has quite good riffs structure, the overall impression is destroyed by these unrehearsed, not thought out piece of playing. The leading example: just take a listen to the last track “I Am the Werewolf” maintained in cool Motörhead vein. The real disaster comes with the opening seconds of the first guitar lead which is absolutely one the worst solo I’ve ever heard in my metal life. By the way, the second one isn’t better…

The next thing that makes me annoy a lot, is using of horror-like introductions. As a whole, the album has almost 37 minutes, without intros – 31 or something. But this is a gross exaggeration. Guys, you are thrash/speed band, I understand one intro on the beginning, maybe the second one on the end. Thus the band serves almost six minutes of dawdling with a total defeat in the title track: opening intro lasts 1:18, but this sweet (?!) melody taken from a nice wedding or some love television series makes me vomit! Is it the call of Cthulhu? NO! Is it scary? NO! Is it the worst intro in metal music? YES! And even if they assure us about creating horror atmosphere in their music, I cannot believe them. During listening to the album, I don’t go in fear and trembling. I can hear only these awful leads and intros.

They wrote in the booklet: “metal is destruction”. Yep, they’re damn right, but these words don’t refer to their music. Guerra Total failed, but using my vivid imagination, I can remove guitar leads and intros, and I will get pretty good old school stuff, definitely nothing new, yet enjoyable and full of metal. For sure the Colombians have a power to create cool parts of rhythm guitar, but solos should be improved next time. All in all, this piece of music is simply weak.

40/100
-Tlacaxipehualiztli

(previously written for Encyclopaedia Metallum, on June, 2013, now modified a bit)

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