Thursday, July 20, 2017

Video Review: GRANADA Sincronizado by Dave Wolff

GRANADA
Sincronizado
From their 2017 full length Sincronizado (Satanath/Symbol Of Domination) released June 23
Distributed by Icarus Music/Blacktape Unorthodox Records
Released in June, Sincronizado is one of two promotional videos Granada filmed for their most recent release. The second video for La Serpiente was released this month. The Buenos Aires band got started opening for Black Dahlia Murder as their first performance. In 2010 they released a demo (Tocá Metal, Cagón) which was followed by a steady string of full lengths (Historias in 2012, Apocalyptic Metal in 2013, Prisionego in 2015 and Sincronizado in 2017). As you may have surmised, Granada write their lyrics entirely in Spanish. This is nothing new for South American metal but here it sounds as volatile as the first bands to do so. As Granada was founded by two guitarists (Manuel "Manolo" Mauriño and Guillermo "Guille" Estevez who is also the band’s vocalist) the crunch and groove is laid forward with gratuitous vehemence from the earliest notes. The dual guitars’ cutting, scraping production goes further to express how caustic the band is capable of being. The drums played by Marcos Edwards are more foundational than usual in pushing this cut forward and while Matias Brandauer’s bass is mostly in the background it offers many absorbing variations on the riffs. Edwards and Brandauer played together in another BA thrash band called Khumeia. This band leaned closer to thrash-death metal as opposed to the thrash-groove of Mauriño and Estevez, so those two dole out much brutal heaviness as the rhythm section. The chorus is fetching with a memorable hook. To offer some words about the video, it shows the band playing in a shady setting and fleeting images of what appears to be a deranged taxidermist and his test subjects. It’s unclear who this taxidermist is or what his purpose as shown in the video is, but these scenes rely more on implied violence than outright gore. This video and the video for La Serpiente are at Granada’s Youube site linked above. -Dave Wolff

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