Duende en la Penumbra - "That Same Evergreen I Love So Well, Despite the Way Its Shadows Make Me Sad" (2020)

It would be too easy to say that the Covid 19 lockdown is taking its toll. I may well be at the 'dressing up like Marie Antoinette' stage, but that's more recreational, and frankly that's how most Saturdays go for me, as a rule.

No, what has really taken a toll is this album. This shining disc of glistening ordure. This huge pimple on the collective arse of metal. 

How bad is it? It's the last thing cute baby seals hear as some gore splatted Canadian sets about them with a length of wood. It makes cystitis in Slough sound like a viable career option.

In summary, Duende en la Penumbra is either a band that's just taking the piss at this point, or it really ought to be. Their name means “Leprechaun in the Twilight” in Spanish, for feck's sake. Read what they called their debut album. READ IT.

It’s the sort of condescension one usually gets from tampon adverts. It may as well have a dream catcher and a purple bong, an estranged Trump-voting aunt, a misspelt tattoo and a pet ferret. 

Did I mention the band consists of two affected prats from New York? They describe themselves as a “blackened forest folk meets djent act.” Satire is dead. Welcome, dear friends, to Planet Twunt.

As for the music itself, it's a shambolic bricolage of badly rendered ideas, hurled together like debris in the wake of a tornado that smells of farts. 

It's a random mix of jazz metal, electronic bleeps, doom, people rasping like parrots with laryngitis, distorted black metal guitars and sodding synth pop. 

It is an amateurish, gormless singalong with badly tuned acoustic guitars.

And it drags. Oh, how it drags. My flesh withered, and my hair went white, as this album dragged its witless carcass across the full, agonising, length of its (COUNT IT) one hour, twelve minutes and eleven f*cking seconds. 

Am I being harsh? No, it exhausts, depresses and annoys in equal measure. Pretension and a lack of talent is a dreadful mix. Let them eat rags.

SHEEPPOINTS: SHI-III-III-III-III-T (1 out of 5)

Available now on the official Duende en la Penumbra Bandcamp page.