Magan "Nathicana" CD
[Sempiternal]
Hmmm, this is a tossup. It's raw black metal from Mexico, but then they throw in orchestral synths all over the place and sort of ruin it. Not that it's that great in the first place, but keyboards just don't fit with primal black metal in my opinion, and this is a classic example of that. Admittedly the band's performances falter more often than I find acceptable, there are some major tuning problems with the instruments, etc. But the actual riffs and stuff aren't that bad, it's all pretty typical with a good mix of tempos, snarling screams, and so on, but the keyboards are all boppy and fucking goofy... it makes no sense at all. And of course the fact that the sound of the keyboards is a bad mix for the music gets worse when the mistuning of the guitars becomes involved. Nightmarish. The acoustic guitars that open "The Steel of My Sword" are really interesting and have more of a traditional feel, which would be cool if they were explored further, but alas that's not the case. The recording is okay in my opinion, everything aside from the keyboards is pretty rugged but tactfully mixed and easy to handle. My problem is that the guitars are so fucking out of tune that it's just a mess. Seriously, at times it's a completely cacophonous jumble of clashing notes and chords that just sounds terrible... it's so unprofessional I can't tolerate it. The layout's all done in black and white with a typically illegible black metal logo and all that jazz. The lyrics aren't the norm, granted I've seen similar texts in the past, but I'm not really sure what they're going for. The more I listen to this the more I hate it. I went from, "Ehhh, this is okay." to "Hmmm, I don't know about this." to "Nope, nope, this definitely blows ass, no thanks." This is basically a band that got lucky enough to find a label that for some unknown reason gave them the opportunity to release what basically amounts to a crappy, premature demo on a professionally pressed CD. Avoid this one, there's really far better bands out there that deserve attention. (2/10)
Running time - 24:22, Tracks: 4
[Notable tracks: show me one song where the band can stay in tune and maybe that would be the one]
Sempiternal Productions - http://www.sempiternalproductions.com

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