Lebel: Rotten Music
Date: February 11th, 2023
Another terra incognita when it’s about metal, and I somehow think even punk or rock scene is the biggest island of Caribbeans (the country contains many little islands, too). It was quite a normal thing in the eighties,when the country was closed for contacts with “rotting West”. Well, thetruth is if someone really wanted and was envious enough, then it was anything impossible to get to know about it. But the situation changedsomething like three decades before. But it seems this is first of all abouttourism and stuff like that.
Anyways, my very first contact with the scene overthere took place in, more or less, the middle of the nineties and it was associatedwith editing my own zine. So as you can see, the break wasquite long, even though I got to know another band from Cuba, Combat Noise, few years ago. And I don’t mention this band only to show off I know the sceneand so on. Actually, I think I’m still a real beginner in this field.
By the way, Orphan Autopsy is quite a young band and it was born in the year 2019 in the capital and the most populous cityof the Republic of Cuba. “Blistering…” is their very first stuffever and it was released more than one year ago (February 11th last year) as a CD by Rotten Music. Of course, what is something natural nowadays, it’s also available online. So it depends only on you what format you wanna have. If it’s about me that’s as easy as pie what my choice would be, but… I’m just not sure why this is called an EP if it contains eight songs which take a little less than twenty seven and a half minutes. But hell with nomenclature! The most, and actually the only importantthing is music itself, isn’t it? And here all fans of brutal death metal should be satisfied with what they have the opportunity to listen to here. This isn’t probably anything that’s a quantum leap in history of the genre, but who cares? That’s a piece of very interesting, enough good quality brutal creativity with everything that such music is about. We have broken riffs, guitar tricks here and there, variable drumming with some passages, deep growling and so on. Tracks are quite short, the longest one is about four minutes and twenty four seconds, and generally aren’t too complicated. I mean, there’s enough with technique, and it takes all instruments, but this is only a means to achieve a goal which’s brutality. And here’s one more proof supporting the thesis: brutality and as fast as possible playing aren’t the same thing and even don’t go mostly together. Tempo we have to do here is in the middle one. Of course guys know how to speed up,but faster parts happen not too often and take place only when the song’s structure needs that, actually.
And now I’ll explain some mysteries. I mean, what Orphan Autopsy and Combat Noise have to do with each other. Well, this isn’t a fact they’re both coming from Havana or even they play quite similar music. The point is bassist and vocalist are common for both bands. Well, in Combat Noise he’s taking care only about bass as well and joined this ensemble in 2022, but anyways.
Well, I somehow feel this review is beginning to be too long. That’s whyI tell you only one more thing. I really recommend this stuff to all fans of brutal playing. And I’m somehow sure they’ll grab this without missing a beat. Rest of you are of course welcome to listen to it, even for gating to know what good quality bands Cuba have to offer, but I’m not sure if you should grab this CD directly after reading my scribble. But since times are like they are, you can always check it out online and decide if it’s worth spending a little money on.
