Unconscious Days

Hey, what do you know, the good old doom has erected itself a shack on Brazilian soil… a permanent one it seems to me; otherwise, how can one explain the existence of such a sizeable group (Imago Mortis, Eternal Sorrow, Luvart, Amen Corner, The Cross, Funeral Dawn, etc.) of slowmotion purveyors, their volcanic elephantine strides easily erasing the vestiges of the country’s brutal violent black/thrash/death past.

The band under scrutiny here surely deserve a resounding round of applause for their exploits on the circuit, theirs being a trad-doom stance, with a capital -T-, also –D-, think the pioneers Black Sabbath for a very good reference point, a pretty effective dark approach to the genre with casual speedy extrapolations making their delivery even more appetizing.

What we have here this time is a collection of unreleased songs, B-sides and demo outtakes, but the style is pretty much the same, pounding steam-roller Sabbath-esque doom with a hefty psychedelic, also abrasive vibe the latter particularly prominent on “It's Over”, a heavy steady march which carves an audible trail for the remaining cuts to follow, “There's an Evil Shines in Me” even heavier and slower, the definitive antediluvian soundtrack, the short dynamic “Hell's Breakfast” also serving a portion of catchy melodic leads. Later on there’s one attempt at near-funeral doom (“Sinister Thrill”), a spacey jam session (“A La Raza”) with a strong 70’s flair, and a more serious epic journey (“Son of Lucifer”), the final “S.W.N.” a faster-paced all-instrumental rouser with an archaic sound quality, most likely the guys’ very first track.

The vocals are clean emotional croons with a hypnotic stoned quality, sometimes recalling Ozzy, but there’s also this pathos-inducing sentiment which also brings the man’s performance to the higher-registers in no time. Expectedly, the production isn’t very crystal-clear, this kind of compilation hardly requires bespoke polished aesthetics, but this material is simply too good to be ignored as a not very important demo/B-sides assembly. In fact, it easily rivals the content of both full-lengths, the band obviously taking their job seriously, performing on a high level throughout their career, intent on staying on the forefront of the doom metal movement in their homeland, including with their side-project, the very similarly-styled Melissa. The competition is fierce right now, but that’s alright… as long as the graves are never too clean, and the riffs dig deeper than the shovels of the most ardent grave diggers out there.