Will Diavol Strâin, as the title of this new album suggests, continue to haunt us forever? We can only hope so. This has certainly been the case throughout the past decade of activity by the Chilean darkwave band; currently composed of the duo Ignacia Strâin, aka Ginger Blue, and Lau M. Eterno Retorno, mixed and mastered by William Faith, is released just a year and a half after Vipera Mortis, a mini-album haunted by the recent passing of founding member Daphne Charmaine. We’ll obviously encounter other ghosts throughout an album whose artwork already evokes a syncretism unique to Latin America—blending spirituality and pop culture—where the macabre is rendered in vivid colors.
Ulthar serves as an introduction to this session with its dreamlike echoes evocative of Lovecraft’s poetic wanderings. The vocals are deep, theatrical, and incantatory. The rhythm, however, is fast-paced: Diavol Strâin’s laments do not hinder the frenzied pace. There is a coldness, but also a post-punk incandescence, a taste for heaviness, and a form of aggression that Un Camino a la Muerte highlights with its batcave flamboyance.
Diavol Strâin’s choruses are imbued with a passionate sense of protest, yet they also hold the mysteries of a dark spell (the instrumental track La Última Inocencia is steeped in just the right amount of occult rituals). Intensity intertwines with hypnotic repetitions, while the dynamism of the Spanish language contrasts with the coldness of the synths. We love the way the bass leads the dance (the excellent 11 Ecos at the end of the album, with its crisp electronic drums, is irresistible), how the guitars screech their way through tracks we traverse like feverish dreams or bouts of haunting, guided by expressive vocals made up of solemn recitations, spectral howls with echoes from beyond the grave, and baroque laments.
Diavol Strâin infuses darkness with a sparkling brilliance. Rage, melancholy, those pounding rhythms, and the scent of a night filled with ghosts swirl with vivid intensity (the cinematography of Terminal del Silencio, with its alienating loops, impresses with its mystical and gothic evocative power). Between a funeral ceremony, an esoteric ritual, and a race through a labyrinth of graves, Eterno Retorno summons a host of tormented souls to remind the living that they are indeed alive.
