I felt quite daunted when approaching this band, having imagined them to be following the same ilk as Sunn O))) with their hooded robes and apparent designs on reinventing the soundwaves. The only points of reference that I have with this kind of thing are the side projects of The Mars Volta (De Facto, Omar’s solo project etc): and most of the time I had found these hard to swallow. I say ‘most of the time’ because I believe that there is a time and place, even a necessity, for this type of music. More important than the time and place is the mood of the listener: he or she should be wearied- not physically weary, but weary of routine- yet simultaneously energised to the point where inward searching seems like a natural use of time. Not a common mood.

The Spanish trio open the album with the track ‘Con Sangre de Quien te Ofenda’: a harmonious cacophony of saxophone, clean guitars and intermittent snare rolls in the style of drummer Buddy Rich. This track, (like many of the songs to follow) is repetitive, it is obscure: yet it somehow strangely manages to work. By the time I was halfway through Orthodox’s second offering on this album I had worked out the strange answer to why their disjointed style enticed rather than alienated: the drumming. The drumming on ‘Amanecer en Puerta Oscura’ single handedly saves it from a ‘De Facto-esque’ inaccessibility from which it would struggle to recover. The constant re-freshening of the rhythm section enlivens the grey ambiance coming from the bass and the dischord of the guitars. For a band with predominantly ‘Doom’ fans, this would seem like a strange advantage to have: it is my understanding that in doom-metal monotony of rhythm is to be treasured , rather than relentlessly re-enlivened.

My favourite track on the album is, contrastingly, one of the few instances where the slow ‘Sleep- influenced’ groove emerges. The song, titled ‘Parte II. Apogeum’, is aided by a vocal injection which had eluded the previous six tracks. The guitar solo on this song is also pretty exceptional.

The fusion of free-form jazz and doom metal is an ambitious one, and Orthodox should be commended for their efforts here. There is potential here, but I fear that the market that would appreciate this record is not great enough for them to reap the rewards of this potential.