You can support Terra Relicta by donating! Please, do so, and thank you!
Band: Vulpus
Album title: Certitude
Release date: 25 June 2017
Label: Pest Productions
Track List:
01. Dysphoria
02. No More Shall I Seek Comfort Amidst These Piles Of Rust
03. Like Troxler's Fading
04. Certitude I
05. Certitude II
06. Along Obsidian Shores
07. Hell Is Truth Seen Too Late
Life and death go together, behind all your egocentrism, behind all your need to be something extraordinary and without defects, even if it is a lie for yourself, only one thing is certain. We are made of the same material and our end is the same. As much as you idolize yourself for being made of "star dust", remember, trash has the same composition, after all we occupy the same Universe.
Certitude, the debut album by Vulpus was recorded between April and November 2016 by talented artists, Nuno Hendrik on vocals, Gustavo Silva on guitars, Daniel Sampaio on bass and Joăo Carvalho on drums. This Portuguese band playing kind of post-atmospheric black metal, brings exactly this feeling and provokes this kind of thoughts throughout this album. A psychological and intellectual journey between the meanderings of the uncertainties of mundane life and the assertion of death. Floating freely between states of soul, inviting you when you are alone, to depriving yourself of prejudices and embracing the journey towards your inner abyss. Extremely addictive, since Vulpus provides us with a beautiful post atmospheric black metal and yet parts of drone, ambient, doom, black and death metal, making it very satisfying.
This album is one of those that you can listen to the whole, or just the atmospheric part or only to the harsh part. The vocals are amazing and captivating, it gives a walk through wild grunts and the explosion of desperate cries. Music is throughout very melodic and loaded with energy, it's somehow full of life, but with plenty of dark and sad passages that will surely affect your senses. The strange atmosphere of this album is reached with double-bass-driven sound which feels like a thunder, abyssal riffs with shimmering guitars and pulsating drums. The raw parts of black metal with technical elements are perfectly in the mix with sludge and death metal, reaching the limits of thrash metal, and all this makes out of Certitude something that attracted me a lot.
I will point out the tracks that are my favorite, but this doesn’t mean the other tracks are less impressive for a debut album in this sub-genre of black metal. So, for me, “Like Troxler's Fading” was one sweet for me. Hard, raw and fast track with some intense guitar riffs that seems not to be from this world, distant vocals and memorable drum lines. The final two tracks, "Along Obsidian Shores" and "Hell Is Truth Seen Too Late" are long in length, a fantastic immersive post metal work with astonishing and quite haunting drone/ambient ending, two of my 10/10 songs from this album. It is fast, furious, but full of pace and atmosphere. Classic, clean, light and dark at the same time. The drums are just incredible and the melody is perfect. I wish the last track would last 60 minutes!
I can easily say that Certitude was a great shot in the uncertainty of todays black metal scene, due to the enourmous number of bands that are arising, but Vulpus can remain calm if their work continues in the same path. I really hope and look forward for more releases from them in the future.
Review written by: Felin Frost
Rating: 9/10
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
