ALBUM REVIEW: Reinos Y Ecorregiones – Ecologist
Santiago, Chile’s ECOLOGIST may only have produced an EP and a demo since their 2017 inception, but the one man black metal act have already managed to make significant waves with their music. Crafting a particularly raw and murky brand of atmospheric black metal, driven by epic melodies and harsh, almost guttural vocals, the band’s style stands apart from the crisp and often formulaic approach that many within the subgenre have been peddling in recent years, setting themselves in stark contrast with many of their contemporaries in the process. The band’s long awaited debut album, Reinos Y Ecorregiones, is a powerful yet dirty sounding effort that will appeal to fans of black metal’s rawer and more atmospheric sides in equal measure.
La Extensa Ecorregión Del Matorral Chileno provides a short, intense introduction that incorporates lots of melodicism whilst embracing a raw production, being both grandiose and coarse. This brilliantly sets the listener up for the first full track on the album, Desierto Florido; it pairs slick guitars and ethereal keyboards with frenetic drums and throaty vocals that contrast perfectly, again creating a juxtaposition that sounds great, offering a varied sound that is dripping with atmosphere but still aggressive. The cleaner guitar passages that cut through the murk provide a haunting interlude that adds a post-rock feel, bridging the song’s two halves and leaning into the band’s epic qualities.
El Desolador Porvenir Del Mar Antártico is relatively brief, punchy and full of caustic tempos, biting leads and dense gutturals, mostly sticking to the classic black metal formula whilst bringing some discordant moments in amongst the soaring riffs and tight percussion, a subtle touch that complements the dirty production well. Recóndito Ardor De La Laguna Del Maule serves as a fairly minimalistic affair that lurches prominently into the dissonance hinted at on the last song, with jarring leads, grating rhythms and bellicose vocals, all shrouded by bombastic keyboards that lend an over-arching, borderline gothic flourish that makes it all the more engrossing. La Asfixia Del Bío Bío, a similarly short, nauseating piece of music that makes fantastic use of disjointed hooks, couples this unnerving style with majestic leads that counterpoint the ferocious core of the rest of the music without crowding it out, striking a fine balance between the visceral and polished sides of the band’s performance.
Bosque Esclerófilo returns to a focused, melody-driven sound that still makes room for some more belligerent moments. Opaque mix aside, it’s one of the album’s most accessible tracks, with crystalline leads and measured vocals going a long way to strip away much of the rabidity that has characterised the last three tracks, whilst leaving enough of that in the sound to prevent the musical shift from being too abrupt. Humedales, the album’s shortest song, is also arguably its most intense, filled with blistering tempos, venom-soaked vocals and a stringent, cacophonous edge that ensures it sticks in the listener’s memory rather than serving as a mere segue.
Selva Valdiviana is another great piece of tight melodic black metal with adventurous leads, bestial vocals and accompanying keyboards that make for a grand and powerful sound in spite of the rougher production. The amazingly dissonant and chaotic intensity that has marked some of this album’s best tracks does creep back into the sound, but for the most part this remains a cavernous and fairly reserved number. Archipiélago caps off this album in the same monolithic manner that it began on, excellently bringing together all of the elements that have been prevalent on the record, from the soaring melodicism to grating ferocity, even making room for a keyboard centric middle section that provides a cinematic touch to inject even more variety, ending this album on one of its more eclectic notes.
As far as debut albums go, this is incredibly impressive, and showcases a lot of musical variety. Early on in the record, with its raw production and classic black metal sound, it does feel as though this is going to be a dependable but fairly standard black metal record, but as it progresses it seems to gain confidence with its song-writing and range, with the eclectic mix of styles on display ensuring there’s something for fans of both accessible and acerbic black metal alike. As ECOLOGIST are still relatively early on in their career, there’s plenty of time to iron out the fairly minor wrinkles within their sound, most of which are more down to the production rather than the music, which is often so rough that some of the subtler elements within the music are buried deep into the mix. Nonetheless, this album lays down some extremely solid foundations for the band and their future music, showing a lot of promise for whatever they have planned next.
Rating: 8/10
Reinos Y Ecorregiones is out now via Fiadh Productions.
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