Redemptus - Blackhearted (Album Review)
About the band
Redemptus are a band that formed in Portugal in 2014, they do a mix of sludge, punk and metal, It consists of members Paulo Rui (Bass and Vocals), Marcos Martins (Drums) and Pedro Simões (Guitar). Their 3rd full length album “Blackhearted” came out September 7th 2021 after being recorded and mastered in 2020.
Photo Credit: Mario Costa
The Review
This album starts out with the title track ‘Black hearted’ It starts out with what sounds like a heartbeat before the instrumental and vocals kick in, the intro is about a minute long and starts out with a solo guitar and the heartbeat before we hear the very interesting almost shouted vocals. The spoken bit midway through works to break up the song a bit, this is a kind of slow but heavy track kind of the style of doom or sludge metal. The song speeds up towards the outro then were right into the next track ‘Heads you win, Tales I lose’. The instrumental at the start leads us to a pause before we hear the vocalist speak and say “Nothings gonna wake you up like suffering” really fast. The music abruptly returns straight after, this has the same slow heaviness of the track before but the vocals are more reminiscent of metal screaming. ‘Sunk in perpetual tidal waves’ is the next song and the shortest on the release, the majority of it is spoken with the heavy vocals coming back at the end. This is a softer track and a good midway point to sort of break the album up a little.
‘It was never meant’ comes next and brings back the Doom feel of the release, it’s also faster than the others, there’s a few times through the song the vocalist switches from singing to speaking almost shouting which I think is an interesting way to do it. This switch is seamless and honestly it feels like it belongs. ‘Still resemble the silence’ is up next, this is the longest track at over 8 mins, the instrumental is a lot cleaner at the start and the shout-singing is pretty cool. The build-up to the distorted sound and heavy vocals featured in the rest of the release is kind of cool, the switch between the clean and distorted instrumental is a really cool contrast and the guitar at the end just kind of sounds cool.
Album Art
‘Still resembles the silence’ is next, the intro is a guitar and drum beat but is soon joined by more shouted vocals, soon they switch to more metal screams, about halfway through the music shifts it sounds more sludge inspired and the vocalist speaks instead of sings. There’s a cool bit where the guitar plays alone and the vocalist sounds like he’s singing in a large room, its just slightly echoed which is different, for most of the album its been a switch between speaking, slight screaming and regular singing, having that echoed effect with the solo guitar is pretty cool. We’re treated to a guitar solo and some amazing drumming before the screaming kicks in again. The guitar plays us out and we go right into the next song. ‘How much pain can fit in one mans chest’ is the next song, it begins sounding like the previous song but a bit faster, the guitar morphs into its own tune however and becomes a lot faster than previously, even the drumming has picked up in speed, the song is mostly heavy vocals however there is some clean vocals midway through during an instrumental, pretty much the entire song is heavy and fast paced, this probably the heaviest song on the album so far.
‘Forgive and forget’ is next and starts with a slow electric guitar, the vocals come in slightly echoed and shouted and they match the pace of the guitar, the drums have also started and keep pace with everything else, we get some solo guitar near the end that plays us out, I love this track for the fact it helps break up the album, kind of like ‘Sunk in perpetual tidal waves’ from earlier in the album, its closer to the end and gives us a little break from the heaviness. ‘Purged by light engulfed by darkness’ ‘Swallow the tears’ and ‘Doomed to crumble’ are the last three tracks and they pretty much follow the same flow as the rest of the album.
Photo credit unknown
Conclusion
I enjoyed this, I like how heavy it is, you can hear a lot of different influences in their music from punk to doom to heavy metal, the instrumentals and the added things like the heartbeat at the start of the album and the spoken sections in songs is pretty interesting, I’m gonna check more of their stuff and so should you.
Socials and Music
Check the bands social media and their Spotify below