Day: March 4, 2016

A dazzling long-distance debut by the Chilean band Mourning Sun, who have the merit of taking us back to the mid-90s, when melodic doom with female vocals was actually a mere transposition of poetry into music, made unique by divine performers such as Kari Rueslåtten and Anneke Van Giersbergen. Ana Carolina, the talented girl who lends her voice to the success of the Santiago band’s album, is its worthy and legitimate heir, with her ethereal, crystalline voice, so much so that it sometimes seems immature, such is the purity that she manages to emanate in every passage. Último Exhalario is a work of an alienating beauty: here the metallic emphasis is manifested in homeopathic quantity and doom is only a spiritual landing place, in which Mourning Sun are placed more for elective affinities than for real musical style. As the last note of Anguish fades away, you’ll find yourself wanting more of this music that feeds your soul before it feeds your body, and thirty-five minutes might not be enough to satisfy you, especially after having tasted its sublime aromas. Vena Cava is a song with an almost unbearable charm, with the guitar maintaining a tone that is constantly threatening and suffused, before opening into a finale that would have had ample right of citizenship in that masterpiece entitled Mandylion. Spirals Unseen offers the main passages marked by that robustness similar to a more canonical gothic doom, but the sax that enters the scene around the fourth minute definitely changes the cards, and we should not ignore two other jewels such as the title track, rarefied at first and then becomes dramatic in its final part, and Cabo De Hornos, where the siren Ana attracts to herself, with no chance to resist her song, the sailors struggling with one of the most dangerous stretches of sea on the planet. Sebastián Castillo and Eduardo Poblete prove to be excellent musicians: the former, with his guitar, accompanies Ana’s caressing voice without ever overpowering it, while the latter binds the sound with rare refinement and equal keyboard sobriety. Último Exhalario is an album that simply transcends genres and leaves you helpless in the presence of its beauty, making any adjective used to describe it seem inadequate or emphatic. There is only one thing left to add, a very banal thing: listen to it, over and over again, without being distracted by some apparently interlocutory passages, which are in fact preparatory to the dazzling emotional flashes given by this wonderful band.

2016 – GS Productions 2017 – The Vinyl Division