My Review: Psychic Hearts & El Ojo y la Navaja - Holy Blood

 

Psychic Hearts & El Ojo y la Navaja - Holy Blood

Something indefinite flays the Mexican sky: it will surely be the result of the power of some soul driven by a creative, honest, vital madness.

Yes, it is, and it has two names: Eric Arevalo and Javier Mejia, gurus absent from our earthly affairs and busy instead making the sky shiver with their nine compositions.

The last one on this LP is the result of a small, momentary separation by Eric, and it is a splendid gesture that it has been included here.

Holy Blood is venom, chaos perfectly instructed to travel from black Industrial roots to Darkwave, never forgetting Postpunk, to ensure that the music has raw, unfolded vitamins: there is something to keep the South American country, which seems to aspire to forms close to dance music, busy. 

Instead, Eric and Javier establish that there is a need to keep in mind how many bands remain anchored to these modes, between gothic and desperation.

And first they put their instruments in the vicinity of something turbulent, fast, swollen with spectres, they play with the fire of the hardest Coldwave to trace, in a hunt for beauty with a dark veil.

Songs like funerals in time to Latin ceremonies, robotic litanies and the impression that they know how to fall in love with what must be eternal through creations that trade beauty for death...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Supino

18th April 2023

https://squallrecordings1.bandcamp.com/album/holy-blood

My Review: Hoffen - La noche de la tempestad

 Hoffen - La noche de la tempestad 

Eight years after the start of his artistic project called HOFFEN, Dalí Lantzeta gives us a new gem, a dark mixture that lights up our heads with a thousand thoughts, disconnected and conditioned by pleas and prayers that come from the heart of the night, in a darkwave rush that suspends all desire for light. Because in this zone it feels good, we feel protected by the almost heartbreaking singing, a pelvic jolt that rises from the belly to reach our restless breaths.

In these four precise minutes, the instruments plan a strategic entry, to channel our listening towards a peace coloured by darkness.

Where the bass and guitar play centre stage, but the rhythm eventually plays its part well to give the track the status of a perfect example of how these musical genres, although, perhaps, hindered by a cumbersome past and by the few possibilities of being able to develop further, in the end still know how to give so many emotions.

Viva Mexico, viva Goth, siempre!

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Supino

18th April 2023

https://hoffen.bandcamp.com/album/la-noche-de-la-tempestad

My Review: TETRICA - Brujeria

 TETRICA - Brujeria

Mexico City: one of the most treasured cradles of Post-Punk and Deathrock, it continues to present the world with bands thirsty for sludge and amalgamated poisons, to the point of becoming a pleasant noose around the neck.

TETRICA are souls that sweep away confusion and do so with notes watered down by winds and magic, crossing oceans to take a leap through time. They have to continue along the road of specifying what is unhealthy, crooked, contrary, and to get there they release a song that puts one in a necessary state of turmoil, a perfect summation of those two musical genres mentioned above, for a result where the voice sounds like that of a witch on the stage of a theatre in free fall. The musicians are the creators of fluids that come from the dirty side of the moon, sparks and coiled, murky impulses that convey the conviction that pain, the propensity to dwell on what really attracts the human being, should not be rejected.

In little more than four minutes we have in our hands a trained gunpowder: do not be afraid of it, it will be food for your secret thoughts...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

16th April 2023

https://tetrica.bandcamp.com/track/brujer-a