{"id":1948196,"date":"2025-08-08T01:54:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T01:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1948196"},"modified":"2025-08-08T01:54:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T01:54:23","slug":"impureza-alcazares-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/impureza-alcazares-album-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Impureza, ‘Alc\u00e1zares’ Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After 20 minutes of crushing, grinding, bruising, pulverizing metal on Alc\u00e1zares<\/em>, there is respite: \u201cMurallas,\u201d track six, where the Franco-Spanish band separates their sound and influences for a brief interlude rooted wholly in Spain\u2019s aural culture. The Phrygian scales echoing in preceding songs take center stage, punctuated by snapping palmas<\/em> accompaniment, with transportive effect. If you\u2019ve 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 \u201cMurallas\u201d works its magic.<\/p>\n

Then the track fades out, and the next, \u201cLa Orden Del Yelmo Negro,\u201d commences with a tap-tap-tap<\/em> 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, C\u00e1diz, or Granada, cities of flamenco\u2019s birthplace, Andalusia. You\u2019re certainly not in Orl\u00e9ans, Impureza\u2019s home city, half a day\u2019s 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\u2019ll leave the full history lesson for another day, but you can thank Franco\u2019s dictatorship for that.)<\/p>\n

Anyone who\u2019s 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\u2019re from and what they sing about gains in relevance. Metal is a worldwide phenomenon. Truthfully, it always has<\/em> been, despite class stereotypes that associate the average metal band as both belonging and appealing to coarser audiences situated in rundown urban America\u2013a low-minded genre geared for low-income people. It\u2019s 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\u2019s marriage of their roots and their interests fits naturally into metal\u2019s evolution in the 2000s, and Alc\u00e1zares<\/em> is a superb example of how we, the listeners, stand to benefit from metal\u2019s global reach.<\/p>\n

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Take the transition from \u201cMurallas\u201d into \u201cLa Orden Del Yelmo Negro\u201d: Start with the explosive aesthetic shift as the former bleeds into the latter; continue with the equally as dramatic pivot in tone. \u201cMurallas\u201d is instrumental. Whatever meaning one ascribes to the track will derive entirely from sensation as well as experience. \u201cLa Orden Del Yelmo Negro\u201d (\u201cThe Order of the Black Helm\u201d) pulls a 180 by spinning a fantastical yarn set in the Reconquista, the 770 year war that concluded with Europe\u2019s 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\u2019s cast, defenders of liberty marching toward the holy land through thick fog. (Assuming our rudimentary Spanish skills aren\u2019t too far off base, that is.)<\/p>\n

Auge\u2019s 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\u2019s rumble, guitarist Lionel Cano Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s wicked vibrato riffs supply requisite atmospheric tension for the coming melee, while Esteban Mart\u00edn\u2019s vocals function as a satin bow tying \u201cLa Orden Del Yelmo Negro\u201d together, beautiful and silky, but wrapped to the point of constrict\ufeff<\/span>ive, healthy discomfort.<\/p>\n

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 Alc\u00e1zares<\/em> goes, Saillard\u2019s fretless bass preserves an uninhibited rhythmic quality across all the album\u2019s tracks. It\u2019s true that bass is foundational to any band, and it\u2019s also true that Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s incorporation of Phrygian scale flourishes in his playing bestows a similar effect on Impureza\u2019s sound as Saillard\u2019s bass. But Saillard introduces a level of fluidity to the otherwise reciprocated movement of metal music writ large.<\/p>\n

The back and forth exchange on Alc\u00e1zares<\/em>\u2019 last track, \u201cSanta Inquisici\u00f3n,\u201d between blast beat chaos on the verses and swaying lyricism on the chorus exemplifies the distinction nicely. Metal isn\u2019t music you dance to. Rather, it\u2019s music you thrash to. Alc\u00e1zares<\/em> lands on new ground where listeners may alternate between the two. Sometimes, that ground is separated from track to track. \u201cMurallas\u201d is joined by \u201cVerdiales,\u201d the album\u2019s opener, and \u201cRuina Del Alc\u00e1zar,\u201d its penultimate song, as dividers breaking up the rest of the record\u2019s heaviness. At other times the ground is common, like \u201cPestilencia,\u201d arguably the finest offering in the 11, where the acoustic is welded to the electric to a revelatory effect: This<\/em> is what metal can sound like.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> Paste since 2013. You can find his collected work at \u201chis personal blog.\u201d<\/a> He\u2019s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.pastemagazine.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After 20 minutes of crushing, grinding, bruising, pulverizing metal on Alc\u00e1zares, there is respite: \u201cMurallas,\u201d track six, where the Franco-Spanish band separates their sound and influences for a brief interlude rooted wholly in Spain\u2019s aural culture. The Phrygian scales echoing in preceding songs take center stage, punctuated by snapping palmas accompaniment, with transportive effect. If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1948197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1948196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Impureza-Alcazares-Album-Review.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1948196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1948197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1948196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1948196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1948196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}