Una Bestia Incontrolable: Metamorphosi 12" (new)

Una Bestia Incontrolable: Metamorphosi 12" (new)


Tags: · 10s · clearance · D-beat · hardcore · hcpmf · noisey · raw · recommended · Spain · spo-default · spo-disabled
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Since emerging fully-formed at the end of 2012 Una Bestia Incontrolable have opened up a place for themselves among the very best hardcore-punk bands in the world. International hardcore is in rude health at the moment but while some indulge in enjoyable well-crafted genre exercises, a crushing mosh-part here, a studied d-beat there, UBI have developed a sound that's compelling and punk, but clearly apart from the autophagic morass that is often punk in the internet age.

Much of Metamorfosi finds itself as a series of shifting hypnotic pulses rolling into each other. Bass and drums chug onwards, a swirling erratic heartbeat, an oncoming force, a nagging buzz and rumble tickling your hindbrain just on the murky borders of conscious thought, as the guitar scritches and scratches with grubby panic, insistent catchy riffs needling and dragged out like stuckthought phrases, daggersharp licks shimmying forth in the sinister thrum.

The record reverberates with a sense of seething distress, mind and body teetering on the edge of a cataclysmic drop, Abric De Plom (Lead Coat) is a recurring nightmare, swallowing you up and unavoidable, the No Us Ho Esperaveu (You Weren't Expecting It) finds a militaristic drive as it echoes with the cold dislocation that is the dull pain-throb baseline of millenial life, Nosaltres Som La Carn (We Are the Flesh) thunders with physical discomfort, collapsing in on itself, Tot Sol is a freeing mechanistic 1-2 rush, the title track a stuttering scream of transformation.

Metamorfosi swings and lives with the threat of something constantly approaching, a change, an ending, some long-threatened eschaton finally invoked, something out there, a beast maybe, of some kind, uncontrollable and almost here. (Joe Briggs)

The album comes in a full colour sleeve with lyric insert designed by guitarrist Guillem El Muro and includes download code.

Our take: I’m still having a bit of trouble wrapping my ears and mind around this latest 12” from Spain’s Una Bestia Incontrolable. The first thing that stuck out to me was the tempo… not only are there not really any fast songs on this record, but every song seems to chug along at a similar middle tempo. The effect of this choice is that all of the songs kind of blend together into this big whole… before you get oriented to these songs, it’s easy to lose track of which track you’re listening to, and I find myself getting into a mode of listening that I associate with techno, classical, krautrock, or other forms of music where the pieces are longer, more cinematic in scope, and rely on gradually evolving structures rather than repeating patterns that alternate in different sequences. It’s not a mode that I’m wholly unaccustomed to, but it is strange for a hardcore band, and requires some adjustment to your listening habits to start to make sense of this thing. Once you do crack that code, though, this thing really starts to unfold. The way that Una Bestia builds a song around a riff or a phrase almost reminds me of a great jazz band, but they’re simpler, more primitive, more direct, and (it goes without saying) more punk. And as with jazz, the payoff isn’t a big chorus or a triumphant key change, but rather the way that the micro interacts with the macro. I feel like I’m basically rambling about this record, but even if you can’t make sense of what I’m trying to get across, hopefully it’s clear that this records is one of those puzzling things that intrigues me but doesn’t quite make sense to me, at least not in the beginning. If you have your idea(l) of what hardcore is and you like to hear bands that live up to it then you’ll probably want to steer clear of this one, but if you like those puzzles this is bound to spend more than its fair share of time on your turntable.