December’s Cold Winter, one of the most innovative Costarrican bands, brings us their album debut “Decaying Recollections”, an excellent work, where we can see the capacity and versatility of these five musicians that explore the limits of the national underground metal scene.

The songs are long, some of them reach the 8 minute barrier, and this gives us a sensation of progression, Opeth school style!!! The album starts with Abhorrence Eternal, a powerful, strong and solid track perfect to start the whole thing, as the song goes on the amazing instrumental performance and the sick growls by Alberto Montero stand out. The song is about despair, is about asking questions and not getting the answers, and the paranoid aspect of existentialism that marks the entire atmosphere of the album

Next we hear “Amanita Muscaria” the longest track of the album, with a mix of several metal genres and with a tiny melodic black intro; without a doubt one of the best and most energetic tracks. Then comes “Portrait of self mutilation” the song that can best describe the essence of the band; it stars with an acoustic intro followed by a great melody, it’s a refreshing piece with baroque influence, growls against clean voice (not quite good enough though), melodic sounds against shivering sounds.

The Alabaster Corpse was the first song I ever heard from this band, and its just great, perfect to start a life gig; again you can hear the contrast and an incredible work on the drums along with the best lyrics the album has to offer,

We go to the track “Ignoto Deo”, is quite different in many aspects, to me this is the weakest song of the album, though the performance of Jorge Chacon on keyboards is amazing, you can say that this song is hard to understand, that’s probably why I couldn’t get into it.

When “Child of delusion” begins, and for the first 15 seconds, you think you know what’s coming, but again DCW surprises us with a sudden change of pace; you can never take anything for granted nor expect a predictable sound, because DCW makes sure we are entertained and intrigued by their next riff.

The album finishes with the melancholic “Rites Of Departure”, this is more than just and outro, this is the perfect example of DCW`s versatility. Overall the album is pretty good, hope they can fix the clean vocals.