We had left Process Of Guilt struggling in 2009 with Erosion, a work in which the foundations were laid for a transformation of the sound into something different from the albeit valid death doom of the early days. In the face of a certain stylistic immobility, albeit far from unwelcome, on the part of the majority of bands devoted to the genre, the steady evolution of the Portuguese group seems all the more mind-blowing in light of the result that flows from this record. In Fæmin, in fact, melancholy and resignation, which were the hallmark of previous productions, are set aside to make way for the anger and aggression represented by sounds that, harkening back to the post metal of Neurosis, the claustrophobic industrial of Godflesh, but also to the early work of the underrated Disbelief, are exhibited with a surprising personality, while not abjuring the monolithic attitude of doom. Existential malaise and rejection of an increasingly alienating reality are manifested through pachydermic songs, comparable to steamrollers that with their slow pace overwhelm everything they encounter in their path, unstoppably. Hugo’s voice, parallel to the band’s sound, has abandoned the deep growl we used to know and has transfigured into a growl, a hate-filled scream from the innermost depths of the human psyche; the sonic platform on which it rests consists of leaden, haunting riffs and a rhythmic base that hammers almost incessantly. There are five tracks present, but the fact that they are interconnected makes, in fact, Fæmin a single body, a sonic nightmare that, by our space-time conventions, lasts only forty minutes, but that in reality never seems to stop; a sonic experience that annihilates by its intensity and that, try as one might, words cannot exhaustively describe. Paradoxically, Process Of Guilt‘s only real problem is that, after an album of this stature, being able to do better will be next to impossible-a worry that many bands wish they had.

2012 – Bleak Recordings