Echoes of the Soul

At the end of April 2020, Brazilian trio Nervosa had a line-up shakeup. Well, in fact it was a real earthquake. Caused by the impact of a comet. Prika Amaral said goodbye to vocalist/bassist Fernanda Lira and drummer Luana Dametto, who soon formed their own band. They laid the bodies of Taina Bergamaschi and Sonia Nusselder (ex-Burning Witches) to the Crypt, and grow "Echoes of the Soul" on their rotting corpses. Is it plain weed or beautiful rose?

During the atmospheric intro we descend into the musty-smelling underground to enjoy the brutal thrash/death metal with some black metal overtones among the dirt and vermin. Changes of pace, percussion blasts, back-slapping riffs, Lira's furious vocals (although I must admit that I'm not a big fan of her voice) - if You know and like Nervosa, you'll feel right at home here. Sometimes there will be a real slaughterhouse (like in the fragments of "Dark Night of the Soul" or "Blood Stained Heritage"), but there will be also nice, melodic, catchy guitar parts. However, not all of them are on the same level: in "Death Arcana" or "Possessed" girls can enchant us with great solos, while in "Under the Black Wings" they aim for boring, "slayer-ish" noise.

Musically, there is still room for improvement, but at the end of the day it all has arms and legs - separated from its owner, but still. Unfortunately, it's worse when it comes to the sound of the material itself. Here we have a quartet consisting of two guitarists, but their parts... are quite clearly tucked away in the back. Fernanda screams in the front (and rattles the bass), Luana's set can also be heard without any complaints, but Taina and Sonia, instead of punching us in the face, play somewhere in the background. And because of that, Crypta's music often lacks the "punch". Whether it was the decision of Arthur Rizek responsible for the mix or maybe the founders themselves didn't want to give up the field - I don't know. I do know, however, that this definitely needs to be improved on the next album!

Nervosa's fans can breathe a sigh of relief: Prika Amaral's "Perpetual Chaos" maintained the level of its predecessors and the debut album of her former bandmates is no less interesting. Admittedly, the latter still seems a bit undercooked, but it's nothing that can't be improved in the future. So we enjoy the nice cover by Wes Besconter, we listen to nice compositions and we hope that on the album number two the guitarists will blow our speakers.

(Originally written for www.metalside.pl)