ninehertz

A moment, if you don't mind, in praise of Fiadh Productions. A proud and fiercely left wing record label scouring the globe to enable likeminded bands and give them this collective exposure, primarily in the fields of black metal - thus also acting as a significant resistance to the right wing presumption of ownership across the storied and bleak history of that scene. Listen to everything they put out, purchase where you can, because they give so much of themselves for our benefit.

And they're not steadfast in their black metal primacy, you'll find all manner of styles, and a fair whack of punk and doom which otherwise might have never reached your ears. Take Las Llagas, unknown prior, from Uruguay, a country I'm not sure we've ever featured a band from across twenty years of ninehertz. The promo suggests "post-punk/sludge", the album title apparently translates to "How much time do we have left to smell eucalyptus?", which provided enough encouragement to delve in.

That briefly described history, of a past in post-punk and then movement towards sludge is an intriguing one, not your usual gateway passage into the doom realms, and you can feel it in the music. This is an amalgamation, and aggregates out as, if anything, something closer to the blackened hardcore sound, elements of crust and screamo and doom - tracks like the excellent Peso Muerto in kinship with the European movement, bands like Coilguns or Birds in Row. It is raw in its recording, and better for it - you can hear the hoarseness of the vocals as everything is poured in, is strained, and like the best of this sub-genre, you feel the band's total emotional commitment, and you live it with them.

The first four songs blaze past, over in no time, and only the near seven minutes of the more introspective closer Eucaliptos take the whole release past the ten minute mark. It's a short introduction to the band, but its more enough to leave its mark.