Santo Rostro- ST (2013)

Santo Rostro- ST (2013)

Santo Rostro is a Spanish band, ok, again, a Spanish HEAVY band, who seems to be following the steps of the ENORMOUS Orthodox, a personal favorite of mine, and  a legendary band form that same country, Santo Rostro (or Holy Face) rides a powerful wave of heavy and dense, dark metal, desperate vocals, ultra heavy bass, dirty and violent guitars and titanic drums, the band performance on this self titled record is an intense one, with and overwhelming dynamic that may recall at moments like Blood Run, the mighty Melvins in their dense and heavy approach, it would be easy to name Black Sabbath as an influence here, but Santo Rostro keeps thing interesting by adopting a more furious and vicious style of approach, never falling in the boring trap, common doom metal band fell into, we have heavy riffing, but it is also one that set the band apart sometimes even falling into more punkish territory, just for second, and then the next thing you know, they unleash those heavy and slow grinding tempos that have more to do with the Melvins and their enormous influence on the so called “sludge” genre.   

Truck Kiss is a solid peace of metal, with lethal riffing and rock bottom rhythm section, a type of soundtrack for a motorcycle trip thru the country, keeping an intense pace at any time, and with powerful sounding vocals, this time the band setting themselves apart from the doom metal crowd, and crossing themselves more into the so called stoner genre.

The vocals of Fake Tongue are full of power and passions and its guitars burns like the sun in the desert, the band creates a powerful intro and once the bass kicks in, the guitars also appears and all hells break loose, we are confronted by a band whose powerful rhythms are very well built and whose dynamics are unforgettable, leaving us fully satisfied on the tune and giving the melody and the groove a big chance to grow into an amazing monster, and the next thing you know, the spirit of Black Sabbath ultra heavy and ultra slow riffing is finally invoked on Cannonball, a sort of very dark and heavy magical blues, the band sounds really powerful here and they are not shy in letting all the power of their guitars out, and a very soulful and commanding vocal makes the tune even better.

Orthodox may come any time soon, their last records haven’t sounded as good as their first one, and they have backed on the experimentalism of Sentencia, but I bet they will be doing great on whatever their next record becomes, because they have now a really powerful and heavy competitor here, one that only needs to expand their sonically ambitions in order to grow into a heavy weight monster, Santo Rostro is an amazing band, one that definitely makes honor to heavy and dense heavy metal, one who is capable of escaping form the most repeated clichés of the genre, one who seems to be firm in their desire to make a name of their own, and constructing their own universe, a big surprise this first records by this very HEAVY Spanish band.