We’re about to premiere a video for the second advance song from Sinistro‘s new album Vértice. But before we get to it, let’s take a few steps back.
This Portuguese band’s last album, 2018’s Sangue Cássia, made a big and favorable impact around our crumbling and gore-streaked halls, and a very distinctive one given that their music was a very big exception to the permeable “rule” in our site’s title.
Our Andy Synn named Sangue Cássia to his year-end list of 2018’s “Critical Top 10” albums, calling it “one of the most intensely intimate, moodily mesmerising releases of the year.”
For us (and for many others) it was therefore very exciting and intriguing to learn that Sinistro would be returning this year with a new album, with a new singer (Priscila Da Costa) and a new label (Alma Mater Records), masterminded by Moonspell singer Fernando Ribeiro.
photo by Martin Baxter
When Decibel Magazine premiered “Pontas Soltas” in March they included this description of the video that accompanied it: “In what could be described as a Tool video directed by David Lynch, Sinistro is giving us six whole months to decode the noir tale of a wooden jointed art class mannequin and whatever that smoking pile of dirt is supposed to be”.
That video definitely was a noirish mystery. Concerning the music, it’s noirish too, and hallucinatory (though the rhythm section regularly punch the listener in the kidneys), with Priscila Da Costa‘s pure singing as the centerpiece in the midst of vaporish, shimmering, and heavily pounding sensations – though her voice also rockets upward, leading the music to exhilarating and expansive zeniths of haunting and harrowing intensity, somehow both blazing and indigo dark but deeply bereft.
Sinistro described the song in these words:
“It showcases the sound we have been perfecting since our previous 2 records, the movie soundtrack vibes and the heavy density ambience mixed with a Fado sensibility throughout the entire album is a constant voyage into our world; the lyrics on ‘Pontas Soltas‘ approach the familiar comfort of repetition vs the unknown aspects of life, life is not meant to be contained but rather embraced and admired as we unravel the beauty of its intricacies.”
And now we come to the song we’re premiering today.
By way of introduction, we again have a comment from the band:
“Sinistro sees ‘Elegia‘ as the most straightforward, driven song on the album while seamlessly carrying the nuanced sensibilities of a film soundtrack as in their previous albums. The theme was inspired by the poignant chronicles ‘Mãe do verbo amar‘ by the Portuguese writer Baptista-Bastos. ‘Elegia‘ is a homage to birth, existence and the enduring love of our mothers.”
This new song also arrives with a video, another black-and-white sequence of imagery that’s intriguing (and connected to the song’s lyrical subjects), but this time interspersed with ingeniously altered film of the band. (The video was directed by Henrique Reis, with editing and colorgrading by VFX Liv Weiss.)
“Elegia” does have an elegiac quality, but it continually ebbs and flows, rendering moods of yearning and resilience as well as torment and sorrow. It includes powerful thrusting and chugging rhythms that hit with visceral heaviness, but also vivid rocking beats. It also includes gentle glittering notes, swirling arpeggios, and wailing chords. It draws out agonies and abandonments, unfurls sweeping cascades of tragic grandeur, but also recalls beauty.
As expected, the vocals are transfixing. It’s a marvel to be carried low and high by Priscila‘s heart-felt and heart-rending voice as it reaches across her impressive range into spine-tingling elevations, interspersed with harmonies and conversational words. Her voice is never really subdued, because its emotional power is always affecting even when softer, but it really raises goosebumps when it hits the stratosphere, pouring everything out.
SINISTRO is:
Priscila Da Costa
Rick Chain
Paulo Lafaia
Ricardo Matias
Pedro Do Vale
Vértice will be released by Alma Mater Records on October 4th, on CD and a double-vinyl edition. We’ve included the pre-order link, but please note that it won’t become active until the morning of August 23rd (CET time).
PRE-ORDER:
https://bit.ly/3WX5EFw
MORE INFO:
https://www.facebook.com/sinistroband/
https://www.instagram.com/sinistroofficial/
https://almamaterrecords.com