Label: Independent
Date: August 31st, 2023
So now we move from Guatemala to Chile’s capital-city Santiago. Actually it is called Santiago de Chile since there’s quite many cities with the name Santiago around Latin America (including the Caribbean), in the Philippines and Spain. But let’s be honest – this one is the largest one and the best well-known, I think. Well, I guess Catholics would be angry and some of them maybe even would crucify me for the last sentence, but who cares! Reason is Santiago de Compostela is, as I heard, one of their main goals of religious trips or how it calls. The most important is the fact there’s a huge and extremely good scene in the city (of course not all metal bands coming from Chile are based in Santiago, but still the most of them) and now, before some catholic death squad will reach and punished me for blasphemy, we’ll focus on one of them.
Unblessed was formed 1999 and has five full-lengths and of course a lot of other releases. As I know, and I’m in touch with Paul since more than decade, “Impia…” was and still is planned as a sixth album, but due to some huge problems I don’t think I need mention here, even if I doubt this is some secret, this is out only in digital form and that’s why calls an EP. By the way, stuff contains an intro and six tracks of music we can, and actually should, name death/black metal. There are some influences of other genres what’s very well proved by the choice of a band who’s covered here and this is the last song you can hear on “Impia Impureza”. The band I’m talking about is unfortunately not existing anymore, and came from New York, their debut album was called “Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses”. By the way, the track covered by Unblessed comes just from this item. This is a very well done cover in my opinion. This isn’t like “let’s play that exactly like they did it”, even if it’s very close to the original. And I tell you what. That’s the way I like it very much. I mean, the ensemble adds something of their own to the covered song, if you know what I mean. By the way, another five tracks are in the mentioned style, even if I somehow can hear some subtle black touches also in the cover-song. To be honest even if musically it’s more about death metal I feel it has quite a lot to do with black, too. But this type is presented by Mika Luttinen and his comrades from Oulu to do here. Anyways, here and there you can hear some guitar tricks or even solos. Riffs are also mostly death metal ones, even if in my opinion it somehow feels some kind of filth due to guitar tuning.There’s also a right dose of melody in this music. Of course this is a melody in death metal or even death/grind meaning. Vocal is something that reminds me in some way “Mental Funeral” or even more “Suomi Finland Perkele”. Of course this is only my association and yours can be, and probably will be, totally different one. However, Paul has deep and at the same time a little bit bubbling growling that awakes, at least in my case, some grind feeling.
But the best thing you can do is to check it out by yourselves and since this is, because of this problem I mentioned before, released only in electronic format then it shouldn’t be any problem to find “Impia Impureza” and listen to it. And here I’ll do what Paul asked me about and what I do with really wild pleasure. If it’s read by someone who works for some label then hopefully will be interested in releasing this also in the form of CD, cassette or LP (or all of them). In my opinion this is stuff worthy of this as well. I know sound isn’t maybe the highest quality’s one, but since music is the most important… Well, it was at least always in my case like that. This is probably because of my age, background (in what times I had begun to listen to metal and how it was then in Poland) and also the fact I somehow always loved demos where sound was, especially from today’s point of view, just terrible. Anyways, as I said before, “Impia…” is very good stuff and hopefully what I wrote made some of you like “yeah, I need to listen to that!”
