Saturday, July 2, 2011

The Evil Of Good


Cultura Tres is a band from Maracay, Venezuela. This foursome plays Stoner/Sludge/Doom Metal, where the emphasis is quite focused on (Death) Metal. Their sound contains also a bit Post Rock.
Their debut album La Cura did cause quite a worldwide buzz. Now Cultura Tres is back with their new album El Mal Del Bien. This album is again full of heavy riffs and thundering bass and drums that are finished with that great vocals.
To give you an idea what this is about: Cultura Tres is according to their Facebook page influenced by the following bands: Black Sabbath, Pestilence, Sepultura, Gorefest, Fabulosos Cadillacs, Silvio Rodriguez, Slayer, Obituary, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Mars Volta, Iron Butterfly, Astor Piazzola, Entombed, Neurosis and Los Natas.
This is a list of rather different names and styles, but it does cover what Cultura Tres stands for. This album contains also an excellent cover of the song Black Sabbath. Enjoy!

Now hailed as the national rock/sludge pride of Venezuela, Cultura Tres came from far. With the first EP "Seis" (2007) the band already outgrew the South American continent. But only after releasing debut album "La Cura" in October 2008, the band started to get noticed worldwide. During the preceding year of rigorous composing, Cultura Tres incorporated many influences into their sound, ranging from sludge to doom metal and from death metal to classic rock.
Important magazines in Europe and Japan praised “La Cura” for its dark and original music, and Metal Hammer magazine even selected Cultura Tres as the month's global discovery. The release tour took the band for 18 months across Europe, South America and to the first well-received shows in Japan. During that period the band also released three video clips that gained them a world-wide cult following in the underground doom & sludge scene (for example being featured band on Doom Metal Alliance, Stonerrock.com and HeavyPlanet.com).

In the summer of 2010 the members locked themselves up in the studio to prepare the second album: “El Mal del Bien”. The result is - in the band members’ own words - “an album with a single clear direction”. Cultura Tres delves deeper into the dark atmospheric vein that already showed itself at moments in debut album La Cura. The daring album opener “Propiedad de Dios” sets the mood: it sounds like the soundtrack of a tragic cult movie. The songs that follow evoke the witchery, slavery, oppression and religious madness that influence the South American continent to this day. Being a concept album adds another dimension to the individual songs. A patient listener will be dragged into a hallucinating trip around the insane world the album paints.
Interestingly, the band has chosen to cover what might well be the first doom track in South America: “Holy Graveyard” (1992) by Epitafio. Alejandro Londoño, having been a member of this band in the past, has now fully closed the circle. Cultura Tres is living proof that the genre of doom/sludge was not dead in South America but merely dormant. Now it has woken again, not only speaking Spanish, but more importantly, with its own face.

El Mal del Bien will be released on vinyl in March 2011, with a tour that will hit Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Europe and Japan. Don't miss this chance to hear the new sound of South American sludge!

(Their bio from Facebook)

Cultura Tres - El Mal Del Bien (2011)



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