MATALOBOS: “PHANTASMAGORIA: HEXED LANDS”

(This is DGR’s review of the third album by the Mexican band Matalobos, released by Concreto Records in February of this year.)

We cannot be the heavy metal spelunkers we imagine ourselves to be if we do not drive ourselves insane chasing after album after album. The result, admittedly, is a segment of blindspots so large that it often seems like we’re using a laser pointer to illuminate an underwater cave. We have one fine dot of light that we manage to cover and everything outside of there either doesn’t exist or is well within “here be dragons” territory.

It just doesn’t seem right, especially when we have a giant content dragnet absorbing potential releases throughout the year and now it seems as if by virtue of being caught in said net, we are driven to discuss something about said capture. That does however also afford us some tremendous opportunities to discover bands we would’t have otherwise crossed paths with, and if we are to live up to our imagined heavy metal Indiana Jones persona then this is something that is an exciting prospect every time.

Mexico’s Matalobos is one such group, a band who captured our eye by way of not just the album art of their third album, suggesting a pulpy goth adventure with tons of leather-draped swagger, but also by title alone. It’s not too often one is going to pass on the opportunity to at least try to listen to something with a title as grandiose as Phantasmagoria: Hexed Lands.

Otherwise, as metal fans, what the hell are we even doing here?

As mentioned, the initial attraction to Phantasmagoria: Hexed Lands came from the cover art, which sailed by while we were snapping up the month’s newest releases. Resembling a movie poster, Phantasmagoria’s cover didn’t really betray much of the music that actually lay within. One could’ve taken a wild guess and assumed it might’ve landed in Spiritworld’s own dust-caked southwestern odes, but in actuality Matalobos are playing in much different territory.

They’re actually on a very weird venn-diagram and make for an interesting combination musically that fascinates enough to carry you through the first listen of Phantasmagoria before you start exploring its various esoteric pathways and musical innards. Matalobos are a little hard to describe at first but they’re definitely a goth-metal inspired band with a heavy, heavy, heavy dosage of doom by way of Europe’s more melancholic acts – those conjuring imagery of ice-covered lakes and snowdrifted forests – and combine it with a taste for death metal, a tiny bit of thrashier stuff, and folk metal and regional influences.

It’s a semi-freewheeling melting pot that the band have created for themselves. That means, yes, you do actually get a bit of Spanish guitar by way of Mexico’s cultural influence on Matalobos’ sound, but you’d never guess that it was going to arrive to you dressed in the pallor of November’s Doom’s and Swallow The Sun’s finery, would you?

Who doesn’t love themselves a good conceptual horror story though? Even moreso, who doesn’t love them a series of horror stories with plenty of trumpet woven throughout the songs so that you always have a good reminder that you’re journeying into the desert? “Panoramica” does the scene setting for Phantasmagoria whilst the actual first song “This Mortal Music” lays the groundwork for the eight other songs that follow. While it doesn’t spoil every surprise that Matalobos have in store for Phantasmagoria, there are some excellent examples provided of things upcoming in their collection of stories. Folklore and hauntings abound for the subject matter of this album, but musically when one has so many ideas before them, so too will you see a larger collective of segments than just your expected death and doom hybridization.

Matalobos stick to a slower tempo for most of the album but the occasional quicker riff does rear its head in service of either the story or to ratchet up the intensity of a particular segment. Sometimes a story within the wider Phantasmagoria requires things to feel climactic; Matalobos then answer those moments in kind. It is difficult to find yourself not being drawn in to the stories being told here, even if there are times wherein the group’s ambition somewhat outstrips the resources available.

It is rare on Phantamasgoria: Hexed Lands for a song to stay in the three or four-minute range. There’s a movement in the back third of the album comprising the songs “Hasta el Viento Tiene Miedo” and “The Alley” where the tracks are about four minutes long but they always precede a longer six-minute number. “Hasta…” opens the doorway for “Where Witches Gather” and its slow-moving bulldozer of a guitar riff and manic shrieking that paints chaos within the middle of the song, whereas “The Alley” is almost a ballad in comparison for its first two minutes before it cedes ground to the grim tale of “Carmen, Buried Alive”.

Outside of their progenitor death-doom form, songs within the album rarely stay in one mode for the entirety of their run times. When a majority of your tracks get up into the six and seven-minute range you do have a little more room to breathe.”Carmen, Buried Alive” goes into full double-bass-pedal gallop in its closing minutes for instance, and earlier in Phantasmagoria “Below The Dam” starts off in oppressive death-doom form before the four-minute mark when one of the bigger trumpet-driven moments of the album makes itself known; from that point on it becomes just as integral an instrument as the base musicians within Matalobos as a whole.

The band slowly introduce elements like this throughout the album, and when you reach the final few songs on the band’s newest release the entire cast of characters – both musical and stage-wise – have been introduced. That’s not to deny the headbanging melodeath-worthy riff that helps to close out the finality of “Below The Dam” either.

Matalobos’ third full-length is undeniably ambitious and that is one of the bigger reasons why it is able to draw people in. The group have written themselves a fully cohesive work that from front-to-back tells a solid collection of stories and has the music to back it up. Rarely does one’s attention drift here, which is even more impressive given how often doom overtures have loaned themselves to letting the mind wander into more meditative places.

The group have innovated here while also displaying a marked talent for standing alongside the much bigger names of the genre. Matalobos could easily draw comparisons like the ones made earlier in this review, as well as to some of the melodramatic moments that My Dying Bride have made a staple of their music. All of this is flavored with instrumentation more regional and folklore-inspired by their Mexican roots without it becoming overwhelmingly cartoonish. Sometimes, Matalobos have to be a larger-than-life group to get a point across, so the movement of a song may seem a little obvious on first go around, but Phantasmagoria: Hexed Land’s moments of fascination elsewhere more than outweigh them.

There is a strong story – well, collection of stories – being told here with solid music to back it up, and it is more than worth the time spent exploring them.

https://matalobos.bandcamp.com/album/phantasmagoria-hexed-lands
https://linktr.ee/matalobos
https://www.facebook.com/matalobosofficial