Vrademargk signs its comeback with an album.
Created in 1999 under the name of Tsunami in Spain, the band changes its name in 2003. Nowadays composed of Jordi Urbano (vocals), Rafael Ruiz (guitar), Germán Padierna (bass) and Manel Rodríguez (drums), the band releases Arrelats, its third album, with the label Blood Fire Death.
Lividesa, a short instrumental introduction, allows us to get familiar with the band’s melancholic universe. Arrelats comes next, and throws into a Melodic Death Metal sung in Catalan. If the language can be surprising at the beginning, we feel that the genre’s codes are still here, offering rage and dark harmonics accompanied by those greasy screams. Estigmes Sobre Cendres comes next with swedish touches in the rhythmic, but also a haunting side that will only be troubled by those heady leads, while vocals hammer us.
L’Alè dels Indòmits grabs us by the throat with this heavy and furious rhythmic as well as sharp melodies accentuated by heaviness, then L’Art de Morir comes to crush us under a haunting and oppressive rhythmic. Melancholic Doom Death influences are strengthen by this soaring break, then this shards of visceral suffering, while the band comes back to those energetic influences with Egocidi, a faster song. However, faster doesn’t mean less intense, and you will understand it by reading (or translating) those deep lyrics. Eudaimonia, the last song, catches us in this flood of leads that support an effective and heavy rhythmic by moments, still playing on a duality between beauty and obvious suffering.
For me, Vrademargk is one of the most interesting discoveries of 2021. Arrelats melts their very own universe with sonorities I know and love, melting melancholy, rage, intensity and raw strength.
90/100