Spain is a country removed from the rest of Europe in more than a geographical sense. The separation of the Iberian Peninsula from continental Europe by the Pyrenees has resulted in a land where many different cultures thrive and long forgotten traditions still linger. From this land come Orthodox, a band formed from veterans of the little-known Spanish underground, and with them they bring their debut, Gran Poder, into the growing movement of drone music. It is an album that, while paying homage to founders of the genre such as Sunn O))) and Earth, brings new themes of strange catholic mysticism and primeval ritual.
The album opens with “Geryon's Throne,” and one can very much picture, through the vast, loping riffs, the eponymous titan from Greek legend trudging over the hills of his Spanish isle, jealous eye on his herd of livestock. Seven minutes into this song, the listener is treated to something that tends to take a back seat in this particular style of music—drums. Instead of being a glorified metronome or even a non-entity, as is the case with many drone bands, the drummer utilizes complex and idiosyncratic drum patterns to build a rapport with the string players’ vast riffs, a technique that would not be out of place on a John Coltrane album. Further into the song, vocals come into the mix—weird, wailing, almost shamanistic cries that rise to a shriek in the ecstasy of ritual. The song steadily builds in tempo, and even the brief periods of silence that punctuate the riffs do not halt the massive inertial force that carries this album forward. It continues thus forward, until suddenly degenerating into a howling storm of feedback—Geryon's death cry as he topples forward with Hercules' arrow in his eye to hit the ground with an earth-rending crash echoed by all of the band members. Before concluding, the song starts back up into a solid down-tuned groove a la the Melvins before finally relenting.
An ominous, rumbling bass kicks off “Arrodilante Ante La Madera Y La Piedr”. The listener is once again treated to more spectacular drumming, with beats that drive the main riff like vultures hounding a dying animal through the desert. Eventually, this breaks into a soaring guitar lead which accompanies the vocalist's mad-priest wailing hymn.
“Officio De Tineblas” provides a pleasant, (albeit brief) interlude, with its gloomy piano and tribal drum beat, one would hope that they would build further on this song and incorporate a different texture into their sound, but after a bafflingly short one and a half minutes, it simply fades into the “El Lamento Del Cabron,” an epic finale that is intensified with clever time signature changes (courtesy of the drummer) that juxtapose steady marching rhythms with jazzy fills while leaving the flow of the song unaltered. It brings to mind the final suicide charge of a doomed army, the vocalist reminiscent of a desperate general trying to rally his demoralized forces with mindless dogma and false hope. Finally, the song subsides into a desert of humming amps, briefly breaking back into the opening riffs, before almost reluctantly sighing into silence.
Although they add interesting bells and whistles to an often cliché-ridden genre, Orthodox can be firmly pigeon-holed into the drone/doom category and are something inexperienced listeners would quite likely turn their noses up at. To a trained ear, however, differences such as the highly regimented approach to songwriting, as opposed to the sonic maelstrom of Sunn O))), would be very recognizable. All similarities aside, Orthodox provide a very interesting take on the drone genre—evoking a morbid severity of shadowy cathedrals and reminiscing of times when humankind worshipped the omnipresent earth beneath and sky above.
| Reviewer: Jasper Rice Added: November 26th 2006 |
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