The few familiar to these pages might be in the know about Peruvian doom combo Don Juan Matus. A few months ago we gave four sparrows to their latest full-length Mas Alla del Sol Poniente and now it’s the turn for El Hijo de la Aurora, a doom trio integrated by two members of Don Juan Matus (drummer Joaquin Cuadra and guitarist Manolo Garfias), who along with vocalist Rafael Cantoni have just released their second album under the title Wicca.
Like the latest from Don Juan Matus, this album pulls from the classics and pushes a sound that is timeless, albeit heavily indebted to the obvious ones. Unlike with Don Juan Matus where every element was spot on, it is precisely the vocalist, Cantoni, who stands out the most in El Hijo de la Aurora. As we’d like to detail below, that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Some say that to be a good vocalist one must be a good listener. If that’s the case then Cantoni is probably a deaf man. His vocals are usually tone-deaf and frequently out of tune and in cases, even out of sync. On “El Ojo Hipnotico” Cantoni clearly strains himself but at least he shows raw power. The song’s classic doom parameters actually work. It is disappointing then to see how the band turns to a more upbeat and boogie-friendly tempo on “Der Golem”, which is almost generic in its 70’s hard rock musical construction and fucking hysterical in the vocal department. Cantoni is a mess in this song. He is all over the place, going in and out of tune randomly and showing great passion but an alarming lack of control. From afar, Wicca’s weaknesses can be overlooked though and as the positives outweigh the negatives, the listener’s focus shifts from the vocals and into the songs.
To put it in perspective, the musical elements in Wicca go from good to great. The songwriting is solid from the start. The subject matter is surely fitting and you can tell that just by the title. Wicca however is handicapped by a weak production job. In that respect, it is an accidental throwback to second tier great hard rock and doom acts from the 70’s. Bands that had the passion and the talent but that exercised no quality control.
Still, we can appreciate the craftsmanship here because with the exception of a couple of cuts (the acoustic drunken blues “Mas Alla de Toda Pena” just doesn’t fit) most of the songs are great and the riffs are mighty fine. Fourteen-minute long “Psicodrama” could have been a boring attempt at pulling the most repeated trick in the doom repertoire; the long fucking tune as the centerpiece, however, via cool screamy samples and resourceful songwriting we are treated to a cool evolving tale as reflected in its aural form. As a second full-length though, it is rather disappointing to realize that had Wicca been more focused, compact and craftily produced it would have been much more solid.
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Written by Ignacio Brown
