Xalpen are a black metal band from Chile and this is their second album.
Xalpen play old-school black metal and The Curse of Kwányep gives us 49 minutes, (53 minutes with the bonus track), of infernal darkness.
This is an album for fans of traditional black metal that favour substance over style, while still maintaining a grip on the aesthetics of the genre. The second wave black metal influence is strong, yet Xalpen also dig deeper into the past to inject their music with earlier first wave black, death, and thrash metal influences.
The Curse of Kwányep offers a well-written collection of tracks. Xalpen have a talent for blackened dynamics and effective songwriting. Xalpen are adept at creating malevolent riffs that seem to dart out of the music to assault the listener, while soul-scourging shrieked vocals lacerate from parts unseen.
The songs are sharp, jagged, and lethal, seemingly forged from ice-hard darkness solidified into weapons of murderous blasphemous might. Ranging from slow atmospheric mood-building to brutal blasting chaos, Xalpen’s music delivers a variety of dark feelings and textures across this thoroughly grim and forbidding album.
The band have strong rhythmic foundations that seem to be made out of the blackest of magicks, and when these are complemented by malefic melodies the music is unstoppable. Boasting the sort of underworld hooks that many a larger black metal act would kill for, The Curse of Kwányep is a formidable album.
If you’re a fan of underground black metal then don’t miss out on what The Curse of Kwányep has to offer.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 