Label: Extreme Gore Productions
Release date: December 1st, 2024
Time to visit the continent whose metal scene has always fascinated me. At the same time, even if I was never alone in this fascination, it isn’t too well-known, with few exceptions coming mostly from Brazil, by the best part of maniacs. Reasons for such a situation, actually Sergon’s explanation of it, you’ll find in one of interviews I made – the one with Thy Dominion. Well, they’re still mysterious ones for me, to be honest. Anyway, SwampTales is representative of young, or rather the youngest generation of ensembles coming from South America, and to be more precise: from Colombia. They were born more or less three years ago in the capital and largest city of Colombia, where more than eight million of people live. This is the country’s center in a lot of aspects, but I somehow doubt it’s also about Metal. I mean, this is maybe not about the number of ensembles or in general Metalheads. But the fact is more well-known, with a cult for me author of such albums as “Requiem” or “Sacro” in lead, bands coming from Medellin.
Anyway, members of SwampTales aren’t any greenhorns, which you can easily hear while listening to “I Am Death”. They know what to do with their instruments and, when we speak about Rafael, how to generate a speech organ adequate to the musical genre performed by the ensemble sounds. And in my opinion, it isn’t as easy as pie in his case, because earlier he was singing in thrash metal band. Well, I can hear, let’s call it, remnants of this way of singing, even if it’s still pure growling. In short, it’s something typical for bands who created their music, in the genre SwampTales plays, at the turn of eighties and nineties. But that’s in my opinion the only thing which can somehow be associated with this sub-genre of our beloved music, or to be more precise – death/thrash. Otherwise, it’s pure death metal assault! We have everything that was written in the schoolbook “How to play death metal” if it existed. And I sincerely doubt I need to enumerate here all attributes, all component parts I mean. All of us know them very well, so it’d just be a senseless waste of time. Of course, as befits the stuff representing good old school, everything starts with spreading darkness intro. Then our Bogota’s metal brothers run with their middle tempo in the most destruction characteristic for South American ensembles style. There’re huge influences of, to make it more clear for you, early bands coming from Florida – even if personally I associate it with the legendary one formed 1986 in Metairie, Louisiana which 1999 changed its name to Opprobrium. Of course, it absolutely doesn’t mean you should expect the same music you can listen to on “Serpent Temptation”! Especially those guys, as I mentioned before, add a huge element of South American wildness, unbridled energy emanating from every riff, every single drumbeat, every entire word. I can see through the eyes of my imagination what’s happening under the stage during their gigs. And this chaos is what in my world is the only right way metalheads should act when ensembles give their shows, by the way!
At the end of this review, I’ll give you some information I probably should write at the beginning. But those of you who read me at least quite often, know I like to bring some, nomen omen, chaos. So, “I am Death” was released December 1st by a not too huge label coming from the same continent (by the way, once, during quite a short period, both countries were united as Great Colombia) – Venezuelan Extreme Gore Productions in the form of CD. And this is all I wanted to write. Especially you’re smart asses and know what to do as quickly as you’ll end to read my scribble!
