Sangue Cássia

The idea of combining the emotions drawn from French torch songs with cataclysmic grief from below the eternal depths of doom is successfully conveyed by Sinistro with this album. There's a great sense of contrast that becomes apparent almost immediately, which is the down-tuned, heaving walls of riffs and the sweet, pure vocals of Patrícia Andrade. Her voice is unusual for this kind of music, somewhere between Françoise Hardy and Iceland's Eivør Pálsdóttir in tone, fairly gentle at times and never succumbing to the cavernous power of the music and screaming bloody murder. No, it's as if she recorded her singing over a moody trip-hop backdrop, only to discover that her vocal tracks were covertly transferred to the ghostly realms of towering post-metal madness. Totally bamboozled! This actually works out exceptionally, as there’s no inclusion of some slacker bro chiming in about his "bong of endless doom" or some guest grunter butting in to remind us how 'metal' this album is. That would have been an easy cop-out. Patrícia herself doesn't bring out the claws, but her voice is far from one-dimensional. The emotional and tonal shifts are there without the need to yank the hair and freak out.

Musically this is massive stuff, and like Patrícia's voice, it doesn't compromise to certain 'metallic' expectations. The overall tempos of these songs range from "slog" down to "dead drummer face-planted on his floor-tom" speed, but when this shit slogs, it fucking slogs in a righteous epic fashion. A song like opener "Cosmos Controle" is a steamroller the size of an aircraft carrier slowly rumbling its way towards the sleeping village, but it moves smoothly, methodically and at a leisurely gait. It sure is a massive spectacle though. This album has got to be one of the better mergers of post-metal and doom metal I've ever heard. There's a haunting, misty atmosphere given by the post elements, shimmering high-note tremelos, miasmic keys, and numerous calm sections with clean string plucking as distant drums call forth the followers, but damn does 'dem songs get all heavy outta nowhere. Christ, the main riff in "Cravo Carne" is absolute monolithic doom central, the kind of riff so low, heavy and fucking dark...that I feel empowered, reinforced through sheer sonic weight. Usually it's fast tempos that rile up the nerves, but a gigantic fat slow riff shambling in my face can sometimes achieve even greater heights of blazing columns.

With this kind of music, technicality is not the point, although Sinistro has proven to be well above average in conceiving quieter moody passages. Besides, there's a metronomic skill required in an extended deliberate slow tempo, in that if anyone loses the pace even briefly, the whole thing turns into a shit-show, like the 5th grade recital I attended last night (no child should ever be given an oboe until they are at least in their teens). I didn't get much of a sludgy sense either, outside of some cavernous elements. This isn't murky shit with timing errors covered up by deliberate swampy production values. Sangue Cássia is cold like early spring, the trees still barren and the nights are long but there's a faint promise of warmth through an angelic voice. There's plenty of bass anchoring things from getting too far into flighty post jams too, and the drums hit hard but aren't industrial cement like SWANS during their Greed era. Sinistro has dropped a fantastic immersive doom and post experience, much like combining ice-cream and brownies. Good on their own, but together I'm gobbling this up for real.