After 20 minutes of crushing, grinding, bruising, pulverizing metal on Alcázares, there is respite: “Murallas,” track six, where the Franco-Spanish band separates their sound and influences for a brief interlude rooted wholly in Spain’s aural culture. The Phrygian scales echoing in preceding songs take center stage, punctuated by snapping palmas accompaniment, with transportive effect. If you’ve ever been to Spain, and had the pleasure of hearing flamenco music played live while there, you might find yourself taking a trip through your memories, revisiting that time and place, as “Murallas” works its magic.
Then the track fades out, and the next, “La Orden Del Yelmo Negro,” commences with a tap-tap-tap from drummer Guilhem Auge, counting down the final moments of peace and quiet before cuing his bandmates. You are not on vacation; this is not Seville, Cádiz, or Granada, cities of flamenco’s birthplace, Andalusia. You’re certainly not in Orléans, Impureza’s home city, half a day’s drive and 700 or so miles away from the border Spain shares with France; Impureza sing entirely in Spanish about its history and rich culture, yet they live in its neighboring country to the north. (We’ll leave the full history lesson for another day, but you can thank Franco’s dictatorship for that.)
Anyone who’s followed the band since its inception in the mid-2000s knows all of this. But as Impureza develop their sound, their compositions, and their musicianship, the gap between where they’re from and what they sing about gains in relevance. Metal is a worldwide phenomenon. Truthfully, it always has been, despite class stereotypes that associate the average metal band as both belonging and appealing to coarser audiences situated in rundown urban America–a low-minded genre geared for low-income people. It’s nonsense, of course, because metal is for everyone, everywhere, and as that perspective gains increasing embrace, notions of what metal music can be, and how it can sound, expands likewise. Impureza’s marriage of their roots and their interests fits naturally into metal’s evolution in the 2000s, and Alcázares is a superb example of how we, the listeners, stand to benefit from metal’s global reach.
Take the transition from “Murallas” into “La Orden Del Yelmo Negro”: Start with the explosive aesthetic shift as the former bleeds into the latter; continue with the equally as dramatic pivot in tone. “Murallas” is instrumental. Whatever meaning one ascribes to the track will derive entirely from sensation as well as experience. “La Orden Del Yelmo Negro” (“The Order of the Black Helm”) pulls a 180 by spinning a fantastical yarn set in the Reconquista, the 770 year war that concluded with Europe’s Christian kingdoms toppling Muslim rule over the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. This is as metal as metal gets: a backdrop of an historical war, an order of warrior monks as Impureza’s cast, defenders of liberty marching toward the holy land through thick fog. (Assuming our rudimentary Spanish skills aren’t too far off base, that is.)
Auge’s percussion again is definitional to the track. Thundering double bass notes give the impression of hooves battering the ground as men on horseback charge into battle; over Auge’s rumble, guitarist Lionel Cano Muñoz’s wicked vibrato riffs supply requisite atmospheric tension for the coming melee, while Esteban Martín’s vocals function as a satin bow tying “La Orden Del Yelmo Negro” together, beautiful and silky, but wrapped to the point of constrictive, healthy discomfort.
Quietly, and unassumingly, bassist Florian Saillard creates cultural continuity through his bass, the most undersung instrument in any metal band. Impureza, being dedicated to its fusion of flamenco with metal, especially needs musical elements that tie together its conflicting tones. No matter how hard Alcázares goes, Saillard’s fretless bass preserves an uninhibited rhythmic quality across all the album’s tracks. It’s true that bass is foundational to any band, and it’s also true that Muñoz’s incorporation of Phrygian scale flourishes in his playing bestows a similar effect on Impureza’s sound as Saillard’s bass. But Saillard introduces a level of fluidity to the otherwise reciprocated movement of metal music writ large.
The back and forth exchange on Alcázares’ last track, “Santa Inquisición,” between blast beat chaos on the verses and swaying lyricism on the chorus exemplifies the distinction nicely. Metal isn’t music you dance to. Rather, it’s music you thrash to. Alcázares lands on new ground where listeners may alternate between the two. Sometimes, that ground is separated from track to track. “Murallas” is joined by “Verdiales,” the album’s opener, and “Ruina Del Alcázar,” its penultimate song, as dividers breaking up the rest of the record’s heaviness. At other times the ground is common, like “Pestilencia,” arguably the finest offering in the 11, where the acoustic is welded to the electric to a revelatory effect: This is what metal can sound like.
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and being a dad for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours. He has contributed to Paste since 2013. You can find his collected work at “his personal blog.” He’s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.pastemagazine.com ’
