Review: Immortal Shadow “Horror Circus”

Immortal Shadow “Horror Circus”

Hm… I found two different cities where this band is in two places. One of them is Murcia, which’s an old city founded long before it became a part of Spain. Actually its origin has nothing to do with religion called Christianity. It was emir of Córdoba Abd ar-Rahman II who made it in 825. Muslim planners, taking advantage of the course of the river Segura, created a complex network of irrigation channels that made the town’s agricultural existence prosperous – it was also because of silk and paper industries, first in Europe. And the truth is that agriculture was the most important for the city during ages. Well, it’s still economically important for Murcia. That’s why it’s often called mulberry city. But since some time tourism and connected with that services such as education (there’s the third oldest university of Spain found in 1272 by the King Alfonso X of Castile) are at least the same important here.

The second IMMORTAL SHADOW’s place of origin is Cartagena. And this is much older than Murcia. Cartagena’s roots are deeply in ancient times. It was the Carthaginian general and politician Hasdrubal the Fair who found it with name Qart Hadasht (New City) around 227 before Nazarene. Economically it was always strongly connected with its location on south-eastern Mediterranean coast of Iberia Peninsula. So it’s clear as a day that if you’re interested in monuments and stuff like that than you’ll surely find something interesting in both cities.

The best known people who were born in Murcia are a cyclist Alejandro Valverde and tennis player Nicolás Almagro.  But it also was and still is many notables connected with several areas of culture whose home-city was/is right here. Well, the same we can say about Cartagena. The only difference is that the best known individual who lived in Cartagena did it in ancient times and rather wasn’t peaceable. His name was Hannibal!

If it’s about Metal there also never was any dessert. Of course we can’t compare its number with Madrid, Barcelona or even Zaragoza, but the reason is that in IMMORTAL SHADOW’s city of origin lives “only” something like 440.000 (Murcia) people, respectively more or less 220.000 (Cartagena).  Anyway, scene which’s there is various if it’s about stylistic: we can find here bands playing music from Heavy Metal to Grindcore. Guys are somewhere, we can say, in the middle cause play Death Metal.

If it’s about their (as a band) age they’re also in the middle, I guess. IMMORTAL SHADOW was found in 2008. So they’re maybe not some veterans of Murcia’s scene (like for example DYSPRAXIA), but they’re also any greenhorns. Until now Matti (bass), Kalim, Ray (both guitars), Samu (vocals) and Anibal (drums) released demo “Destrucción” in 2009 and EP (I still think that stuff which takes almost twenty minutes shouldn’t be called like this) “Death Has a Partner Now” this year. So now you already know that this year guys release stuffs very often. “Horror Circus” is their debut album and contains ten songs.

As I said earlier IMMORTAL SHADOW plays Death Metal, but it’s not clean as a whistle one. There’re influences from other sub-genres of Metal here. The other matter is that these touches are rather subtle and you have to listen to it quite carefully to find them in for example some riffs. They’re various, mostly quite broken and surely on its way melodic. Kalim & Ray (whose job are also chorus – it doesn’t take place often) create guitar lines, which can bore only some really very choosy pernickety person. We have also something what I’d call solos. They’re not some technical displays in vein of “listen how twisty I can play guitar” and that’s why, I guess, they sound interesting and fresh. Anibal drums variously as well, too. I can’t notice complicated passages and stuff like that here. But there happens a lot – just like in the case of guitars. Well, in my personal opinion he could use cymbals in bugger scale what would make music more complete and interesting. Samu uses first of all and mostly growling. He does it variously and we can hear few kinds of that. Anyway, for example in “Shadow of North“ it’s not growling at all and it connotes with Thrash Metal somehow – at least for me. Uff… At least once on the end I’ll describe something other than vocal. Bass plays as variously as rest of instruments. Matti’s work isn’t maybe very well hearable, but if somebody wants to hear this than it’s not mission impossible.

Guys describe their creativity as Melodic Death Metal. Well, I can agree with that, but it’s surely not clean one. I mean, I can hear here influences of other sub-genres of Metal. Everything’s in Death Metal standards and as I wrote before these touches are rather subtle (but well hearable for someone who listen carefully). Music is surely melodic, but in the same time brutal. Good album!