Una vida en el infierno

Anomalia is a band that has experimented quite a lot of changes through its history. They began as a thrash/death band with English lyrics, as we can hear in their "After The End" demo from 2006. But after a lot of line-up changes, including the arrival of ex Dar Sangre Ramiro Arias to fill in vocals, they changed their style to one closer to deathcore, with use of guttural vocals and pig squeals, as heard in their debut album "Mea Culpa" from 2012.

"Una Vida En El Infierno", the new Anomalía's album and the first one with Spanish lyrics, poses a new change in the sound of this band from Tigre, province of Buenos Aires. Ditching the pig squeals and using screaming vocals in place of the guttural ones, Anomalía gets closer to melodic metalcore, and now you may be thinking "do we need another metalcore band?", and the truth is that that is a good question: in the first world's scene, and this is if we are optimistic, metalcore is barely alive due to the overpopulation of generic bands. Luckily, in Argentina the situation is quite different. Bands like Clay, All For Love and, especially, Deny, are only a few of the bands that take part in a healthy scene, with an impressive following behind them; mostly for an extensive use of social media and direct contact with their fanbase from what a lot of the so called "true metal" bands could learn a few things.

This album has some unexpected elements, the kind that you don't expect to hear when listening to a metalcore album, like the acoustic instrumental interlude "La Calma", but for the most part it sticks to the genre's canon: contrast between screamed and clean vocals, melodic riffs with hardcore punk's aggressiveness, explosive choruses, et cetera. Nothing that we haven't heard before in some other way, but the guys from Anomalía are talented, and they know how to use this elements to create a pretty entertaining experience.

A pretty big point is that they avoid most of metalcore's vices and even then they accomplish to sound like you would expect a metalcore band: Ramiro Arias is not only good at screaming, but his clean vocals have a special touch and manage to avoid the cringeness that plagues the genre; David Iapalucci, guitarist and only original member, composes songs that get away from the mess of breakdowns characteristic of the genre; and bassist Ariel Olarte and drummer Javier Cuello, who introduces a lot of arrangements in his drumming, provide a fitting base for the song, although I would have liked that the former was higher in the mix to talk individually about him.

"Tu Soledad", "En El Ojo del Huracán" y "Una Vida En El Infierno" are only a few of the songs that I could choose, but it's pretty hard to choose when the album has only nine songs and thirty minutes of length. Anomalía is a band committed to their art, sincere and very talented. It's just a matter of leaving aside our bias to really appreciate a band with a great future ahead.

[Originally published in Spanish at https://redripperblues.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/anomalia-2015-una-vida-en-el-infierno/]