Saklas is back with its first EP.
Created in 2017 in Chile by Hades Code (guitar) and VoidLogik (drums), the band begins as a duo. After two demos, they are joined Blasphemous Holocaust (bass, Gorjeo Seglar, Wildes Heer…), Berkana Ad Astra (keyboards, Throne of Evil, Aseidad…) and Surt (vocals), and the band releases a live album in 2020 before releasing The One Who Swallowed God in 2022 at Personal Records.
Mastering The Chaos Meditation opens the EP with mysterious sonorities, but the atmospheric sound will be overtaken by a visceral brutality and a seizing dissonance. The vocalist alternates the types of screams to complete the uncompromising Black Metal, but the song’s length allows the band to feed a continuously weighing ambience, whether the rhythmic is fast or not. Empty Realm offers a majestic break of more than two minutes which gets darker, allowing some kind of melancholy to soar before The One Who Swallowed God, the eponymous track, comes next with more raw elements. Blast is melted to majestic ambiences while placing violent or disturbing additions, like those vocal parts which sometimes allow unexpected accelerations to leap to our throat. The song becomes very occult with this airy break, then a long silence makes modern influences spawn into this strange blackness, before La Poderosa Muerte, a cover from Los Jaivas, a chilean Progressive Rock band cover, comes to close the EP. Whether the Black Metal basis obviously governs the song, musicians allow themselves some freedom like the haunting bass, clean vocals and modern keyboards to fit the original song, which will for sure be surprising.
Whether Saklas is anchored into a Black Metal with very airy tones, the band can also offer some diversity. The One Who Swallowed God allows them to explore a raw, soaring but still quite modern sound, which perfectly fits them.
85/100