Band: Mar De Grises

Title: Draining The Waterheart

Label: Firebox Records

Distribution: LSP Music

Release date: 14/04/2008

Review: CD

I really don't know many Doom / Death-bands from Chile : Subtenebras, Poema Arcanvs and Seas Of Torment - and that's it, I guess. And of course this band, Mar De Grises (‘sea of greys'). This formation recorded a nameless demo tape in 2002, which immediately drew attention of the Finnish Doom-label Firebox , and this resulted in a contract for several albums. The first effort was the 2004-full length The Tatterdemalion Express , which probably was one of the best Doom/Death releases from South America that very same year. Now, four years later, and after having toured around the world (with, not to forget, a participation on the German Doom Shall Rise festival), Mar De Grises and Firebox release the second full length studio release, called Draining The Waterheart, an album that goes on where the former one ended. The quintet created an epos that combines melancholy with strength, and an old school feeling with modernism. The latter means that Mar De Grises succeed to combine the ‘basic' Doom / Death Metal-spirit (think: early Anathema, Mythological Cold Towers, My Dying Bride and so on) with avant-garde and progressive Post-Rock-elements in the vein of the current Katatonia and Anathema, to name a few. For more than an hour, this emotional and psychologically well-thought album stays interesting and the whole is much more varying than the band's 2004-debut album (even though I did like that one very much too!). As from the opening song Sleep Just One Dawn on, it is clear that Rodrigo Morris (guitars, music, production and programming), Sergio Alvarez (g), Rodrigo Galvez (bass and (executive) production), Juan Escobar (vocals, keyboards, production, lyrics and music; known from e.g. Subtenebras) and Alejandro Arce (drums and lyrics; also involved with Target and Norphelida), do know how to create and perform universal and convincing tragic Epic with a very darkened edge. All songs are varying and not one single moment they do bore (which can sometimes / often be the case with 1 long tracks and 2 the introduction of Post-Rock elements). The artwork (by Tuomo Lehtonen) is very nice and the sound / production, finally, is sublime: not unbalanced and not too ‘polished' either (which is also a common sickness when it comes to progressive Post-Rock or Doom).

85/100

Ivan Tibos .