Review: Ocultum ‘Buena Muerte’

If you know anything about me and extreme music, I’ve been on a real crusade for people to understand just how incredible the Chilean metal scene is. Home of some of death metal, black metal and doom’s most impressive bands as well as rising stars, it has been a boom period for albums in this part of the world.

The latest addition to this is Ocultum, a funeral doom/stoner/sludge trio from Santiago that has really been around since 2009, but this is my first exposure to them. Buena Muerte is their third full-length, and it is out now through Heavy Psych Sounds.

The haunting, eerie opening track Drugged Wizard Walks By starts like a Hammer Horror movie and then descends to the dragging depths of doom hell, pulling us all into its occult vortex. Trudging riffs of granite swoon and sway in the void, guitar melodies snake through hazy blues grooves and everything is drenched in a soupy production job that fuzzes it all up perfectly.

The title track, Buena Suerte, actually has a powerful hardcore influence into its sludge as well, a real powerhouse gallop to it at points that belies that trudging, doomy opening. You can tell that this isn’t going to be a one style record, Ocultum are melting genres in this blood-filled pot. After the haunting yet ‘break for air’ interlude of Fortunato’s Fortune, we have the magnificent Last Weed On Earth, a massive, slow-moving glacier of classic fuzzy stoner doom.

Rumbling hypnotic riffs and a massive guitar tone help guide the trio into a sludgy odyssey of brutality and groove…

It caves in, it roils, it stomps with a malevolently groovy intent; Ocultum have got this sound down to the finest art. The earth shakes under these riffs, in a perfect prayer to the gods of Electric Wizard. In fact, that band are who Ocultum remind me of the most, except with a more sludgy attitude than Jus Osborn’s suffocating haze.

It leads us straight into closer, Emki’s Return, a track that takes Triptykon’s massive wall of blackness, laces it with a smoky stoner gruffness, roughs it up with some bluesy grit and leads us deep into the darkness. As it ends with running water, cold acoustic notes and a real sense of profound loss all of a sudden, it is a really affecting close to a record that has been a force of nature.

I can tell you the first thing I was ready to do after listening to this was to go back and find more records by Ocultum because Buena Muerte is an incredible record. Rumbling hypnotic riffs and a massive guitar tone help guide the trio into a sludgy odyssey of brutality and groove. A lot of these sludge/doom bands try to bludgeon you to death, a lot of stoner doom bands try to lull you into a smoky oblivion, but Ocultum go for both in equal measure and it is glorious. Possibly the closest I’ve ever come to a true heir to Electric Wizard’s eldritch throne and coming from me, that means a lot. Buenas Muerte is a masterpiece.

Label: Heavy Psych Sounds
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Scribed by: Sandy Williamson