Sobre tus Cenizas

I first heard of this album a year after it was released. Ever since that day, I can confirm that this is one of my favourite metalcore albums to have ever been created, and one of the best albums from any Argentinian band that I've ever heard, most definitely.

Metalcore is regarded as a "shitty" genre by most metalheads because of how... well... how shitty most bands that play this genre are. Most people tend to think of Metalcore as a bunch of mean breakdowns and little to no riffing, and to be honest many bands do be like that, but Sobre tus Cenizas is an exception to this rule. This is one of those rare metalcore albums that are actually good, non-generic, original efforts.

STC takes influence from various genres in order to create this almost-masterpiece; thrash and death metal are always present in this album. There's a huge variety of riffs and ideas throughout all of the 9 tracks present in this release; breakdown-based riffs, thrash sections, death metal-esque tremolo picking and the ever-present, classical melodic death metal riffs. There's never any shortage of riffs at any point in this album, even in the most calm of parts, or during the breakdown sections, there's always something interesting being played by the guitarists; there isn't a single note in the scale in which the songs are written that is left unplayed. There's a huge amount of virtuosity in the writing of this music, there are no blank spaces, the rhythm guitar is always playing an actual riff instead of just power chords, and the lead guitar is constantly present.

There's also a huge use of different scales and modalities, which even change throughout single songs. You can clearly hear some riffs and verses being played and sung in a major scale (Like in the second verse in "Fluir" or at the start of "Del castigo"), and the transitions from and to a minor scale are swift and perfectly executed in all of the songs were they are present, and this gives these compositions a lot of personality, you can feel how the music itself talks to you, apart from the lyrics (which I'll get too later). Apart from this, there's also some progressive influences to all of this; I'm pretty sure there are various time signature switches which are not usually noticed because they sound very organic, but I'm sure I could hear some 6/4 and 3/4 beats here and there. The last thing to mention regarding the structure of these songs is how well the band manages to implement slower parts and how they can go from fast and energetic to slow and doom-y sections, and then quickly go back to making people mosh; it's just great.

This album feels like a complete effort; this is not just the burger, it's the burger with cheese, pickles, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, bacon, lettuce and tomato, and on top of that, you get fries and a large soda. The amount of guitar work this album has is equal to all of Metallica's releases since the black album. It's not just the guitar though, both the bass and the drums do their stuff; the drums are complete, the fills are perfect, the drum beats are various, the blast beats are constant, and the drummer is simply nuts, while the bass is not clearly audible, but its presence is still felt throughout this release.

To top all of this, we got Juan Ignacio Orcajada's vocals. This guy is one of the best vocalists to ever come out from the Buenos Aires metal scene; his harsh singing and his growls are pretty good, he has somewhat of a hardcore-ish harsh voice, but it's definitely not the shitty high pitched shrieks you hear from most metalcore bands, this guy manages to find the perfect balance between high shrieks and low growls. He's pretty damn good at clean singing as well; the songs in this album are fast-paced and energetic, but they always reach some slower section with some sort of melodic riffing, and that's when his clean vocals kick in, and it's just great; he has got great vibrato in his voice, and a lot of creativity to make his vocal lines interesting and complement well with the songs.

The lyrics are also something that need to be pointed out; they are fucking great. It's a bit lame to try and explain the lyrics since everyone probably has his own interpretation of them, and you just gotta read or hear them (if you understand Spanish, of course) to probably understand them, but what I want to point out is how well written these lyrics are. Most metalcore bands tend to have these shitty lyrics talking about love, or about how we live in a society and they also tend to curse every single verse or so, and there's little to no effort in writing meaningful lyrics that are interesting to both hear and read. but this is definitely not the case with STC. Their lyrics mainly talk about personal problems, the struggles of life, about being an hypocrite, about not being yourself. Sometimes these lyrics can be taken somewhat personally, and aren't terrible combinations of words written by a edgy teenager, but instead pieces of poetry turned into songs, and the ability of Orcajada to write these lyrics is just worthy of envy; the wording, the rhyming, the meaning, everything is on point.

This is a great, GREAT album, it has heavy atmospheres, a big amount of interesting and very good riffs, and just everything that most -core bands lack, hell, even most BANDS lack, regardless of the genre. This is one of those albums that I keep enjoying no matter how many times I hear them, and this is definitely a must hear for anyone who likes extreme metal, and actually good metalcore specifically. Even those who despise this genre should give this album a try, because it's just on another level. Sobre tus Cenizas is one of the most interesting bands to come out in recent years, and this album is proof of it.