Etna review by Aquarius

This South American blackened dark-prog doom-noise psychedelia collective holds the distinction of having been the very first, and to this day only, CASSETTE Record Of The Week. And at the time, we were so blown away, we really had no choice, everything about Un Festin Sagital pushed all of our (and presumably your) buttons, occult prog metal meets creepy black ambient soundscapery, haunting minimal moodiness meets, propulsive post punk crush, howling metallic heft meets gently psychedelic folkiness, all wound up into one dizzying tangle of heady heaviness. Since then, we've dug deeper into the bands catalog, with much help from local label Black Horizons, who brings us yet another amazing collection of the group's tripped out sound, this one not that far removed from the others, if anything more of an extension, the sound sprawling and expansive, the opener especially, the group slipping into something more space rocky and dreamy, sounding almost like something you might expect to hear on Cardinal Fuzz, loping sinewy basslines, clouds of cymbal shimmer, fluttering flutes, minimal percussion, almost like a jazzier, soundtrackier Spacemen 3, hazy and hypnotic, before the sound builds to some seriously lysergic heavy psych, billowing clouds of FX drenched melodies, the drums more driving, eventually swathed in some seriously caustic noise guitar crunch. Holy shit, fans of the Heads and Carlton Melton and White Hills and all the rest, you might just want to check out these weirdos too.

Cuz goddamn if the rest of the record doesn't fall in line, the second track two, laying down a dark, motorik groove, wreathed in sonic swirls, and with a huge krautrock vibe, again, following that tried and true space rock sonic template, the sound eventually building to a wild freak out, but instead of straight up shred, it's all wild scrabbly tangles, and distorted chugs, roiling piano rumbles, scalding arcs of white noise psych swirl, seriously epic space/psych rock for sure. But these guys are NOT space rockers, they just happen to do it better than most. So there's plenty of other mysterious moodiness happening. The sound devolving into some churning slo-mo-doom, still folk flecked, a cinematic sprawl that lurches from noisy crashing pummel, to hushed whispery drift, the whole second half sounding like the score from some lost Italian seventies giallo. From there on out, the band whip out some mathy stop start post punk angularity, more distortion drenched spaciness, some groovy organ soaked fusiony prog-jazz, again pocked with bursts of wild distorted noise rock crunch, until finally, things finish off with the epic 21 minute title track, the unfurls like the bastard child of all those space rock bands we love, the usual zoner drift, is transformed into what sounds like 3 or 4 bands playing at once, a frenzied cacophony, somehow held together but a buried rhythm section, the end result a sort of kraut-noise, that about halfway through settles into one final stretch of noisy, motorik kraut-prog mesmer, psychedelic and hypnotic, and really fucking great.

As with all the Black Horizons tapes, super fancy packaging, this time an 8 panel J-card, silver metallic ink on green matte paper, inside a folded up mini-poster/insert, and as always, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.