shakedown.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A community for live music fans with roots in the jam scene. Shakedown Social is run by a team of volunteers (led by @clifff and @sethadam1) and funded by donations.

Administered by:

Server stats:

263
active users

#nile

1 post1 participant0 posts today

Impureza – Alcázares Review

By Angry Metal Guy

Founded in 2004 by guitarist Lionel Cano Muñoz (of Spanish descent, but born in Orléans, France), Impureza is based in France but fully embraces Spanish heritage in both concept and execution. Jokingly called the “French Nile,”1 Impureza blends extreme, brutal death metal with rich cultural motifs and flamenco. Alcázares marks Impureza’s third full-length album in 15 years. The album continues the band’s legacy of high-concept releases, following La Iglesia del Odio (2010, an Inquisition-themed album) and La Caída de Tonatiuh (2017, an Aztec Conquest-themed album).2

Conceptually, Alcázares is based around the Reconquista, a centuries-long conflict between Christian and Muslim forces that started in the 8th century, following Tariq ibn Ziyad’s conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom in 711 and the Battle of Covadonga (in ~722) and ending in 1492 with the establishment of the Catholic Monarchs.3 Alcázares means “fortresses” or “palaces.”4 The word is derived from Arabic, “al-qaṣr” (ٱلْقَصْر),5 which means the same. As with many things on the Iberian Peninsula, like flamenco itself, the tension at the heart of Alcázares is between cultures, faiths, and empires—specifically between Islam and Christianity, the Moor and the Castilian. Symbolically, the title evokes the contested strongholds of medieval Spain: places of siege, destruction, religious power, and shifting dominion between Muslim and Christian empires.

Seven years have changed and improved Impureza. At its core, their sound is best evoked by invoking two excellent bands: Vidres a la Sang and Æternam.6 2017’s La Caída de Tonatiuh was replete with the blasty, brutal ’90s style death metal (à la Vidres a la Sang), a sound near to my heart and that in a lot of ways has receded in the modern death metal landscape. Alcázares doesn’t shy away from this sound. If you needle drop anywhere in the 49 minutes of music on Alcázares, you are likely to land within a minute of blast beats, guttural vocals, and trem-picked, harmonized guitars. The Nileesque brutality sets down the deepest root of their sound, but the tree has also flowered over the years.

Where La Caída de Tonatiuh felt like the tale of two records, Alcázares feels unified. Having backed away from single-minded br00tality, Impureza does a better job of integrating the different flavors of their sound. The real innovation is that they have discovered dynamics. More clean vocals (“La Orden del Yelmo Negro,” “Castigos Eclesiásticos”), better use of integrated acoustic guitars (“Pestilencia,” “Castigos Eclesiásticos”), and the strong melodic content of flamenco—still bearing the history of MENA influences—evokes Æternam’s last two records and even at times Melechesh. For me, this is a perfect blend of brutal and melodic. I love the growls, the anthemic cleans, the fretless bass (“Ruina del Alcázar”), and the tightly integrated feel.

Integration of flamenco and metal is not easy. This is because these two genres of music are fundamentally quite different. Said differently, flamenco is progressive as fuck. It uses a 12-beat cycle,7 where accents fall unpredictably (on beats 12, 3, 6, 8, 10), rather than on typical downbeats.8 Additionally, these cycles blend note-groupings of 2s and 3s (hemiolas), which create shifting accents and internal tensions. I can only imagine that this is genuinely tough to integrate into metal, which operates in 4/4 or 3/4 or, when we’re feeling particularly saucy, 7/8. So, while some moments here threw me at first—seeming messy or chaotic, almost like a band that wasn’t playing in time (for example, on “Santa Inquisición” and “Pestalencia”)—I realized that what I was hearing was the sound of innovation and adventure.

In addition to compositional innovations and refinements, Alcázares benefits from notably improved production. The mix is cleaner, clearer, and better balanced than their previous album, allowing each element—flamenco, cleans, and death metal—to find its place without overpowering the others. It’s probably too loud, but it is never muddy. The guitars shimmer when needed and crush when they must. The bass is visceral and perfectly matched with the drums, and though they sound crushed and a bit mechanical—it is Jacob Hansen, after all—they punch through with precision. Everything feels tighter, more refined, and integrated in a way that I genuinely love.

Impureza has an Orphaned Land-like quality of disappearing and then reappearing to remind you of just what you were missing. Alcázares is Impureza at their most ambitious: historically immersed, sonically expansive, blasphemous, and, well, super into the (alternative) histories of colonialism. Alcázares is a violent, poetic invocation of Spain’s medieval imagination, and it sports an enchanting vibe that recalls some of the best records I own. Seven years of development resulted in a record full of tight riffs, beautiful guitar work, and intense compositions, and they somehow managed to work a Necromancer into a historical concept album (“El Ejército de los Fallecidos de Alarcos”). I would say that I hope to see something from them soon, but I’m happy to wait another seven years for another record of this quality.

Rating: Very Good!
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s CBR MP3
Label: Season of Mist
Websites: impureza.bandcamp.com
Release Date: July 11th, 2025

Show 8 footnotes

  1. By whom, the press bio is unclear. ↩
  2. Honestly, I hadn’t remembered that they were Spanish-via-France, which makes that theme reminiscent of that time when I yelled at Serenity for writing a concept album about Richard Lionhearted and asked, “Who would write an uncritical record about the Crusades in 2017?” You’ll find no such recriminations here, however. ‘Cause this one has a legit Necromancer raising the dead in it. So like, whatever. ↩
  3. In reassessing the idea that it’s reasonable to call something that takes 780 years a “conflict,” I’m starting to feel like the entire concept of the Reconquista is one of those post-hoc historical constructions that makes sense in a very esoteric way, but seems hard to execute in terms of concept. Like writing a concept record about the Renaissance. ↩
  4. As I’m researching this, it appears that this often specifically refers to Moorish fortresses from Medieval Spain. ↩
  5. I hope. ↩
  6. It’s important to note that I do not mean this version of Vidres a la Sang, but instead this 2004 version. ↩
  7. If I understand all of this correctly… ↩
  8. Sometimes it even uses free time, which is just like “Ah, fuck it!” ↩

#2025 #35 #Aeternam #Alcázares #DeathMetal #Flamenco #FleshgodApocalypse #Impureza #Jul25 #LaCaìdaDeTonatiuh #Melechesh #Nile #VidresALaSang

Replied in thread

#bookstodon #vendredilecture #books #mastolivre #livre #Nile "River of The Gods" de Candice Millard. L'autrice raconte la quête de Richard Francis Burton et John Speke pour trouver les sources du Nil Au milieu du XIXe siècle. Elle s'intéresse surtout à la rivalité entre les deux explorateurs, l'un et l'autre de caractère exécrable, aux dépens de la description des paysages et des tribus. Le personnage de loin le plus intéressant et auquel elle rend hommage, c'est Sidi Mubarak Bombay, l'homme qui leur a servi de guide et d'interprète. Sans doute le premier Africain à avoir autant parcouru le continent au cours d'une vie

Continued thread

⬆️ In a significant move, #Turkey agreed to provide drones to #Egypt after the two countries normalized ties following a decade of rupture.

This means that Turkey will now supply drones to both sides in the Egypt-#Ethiopia conflict ➡️ mastodon.social/@rameshgupta/1

Both sides have been fighting over a dam on the #Nile and a broader regional conflict over Ethiopia's attempts to gain access to #RedSea via #Somaliland, thereby destabilizing #HornOfAfrica ➡️ mastodon.social/@rameshgupta/1

reuters.com/world/middle-east/

Continued thread

⬆️ #Rivalry in #HornOfAfrica

#Egypt is angry at #Ethiopia over latter's plan to construct #GrandRenaissanceDam over #Nile

Ethiopia is angry at #Eritrea for seceding, leaving it landlocked & robbing it of access to #RedSea

#Somalia is angry at #Somaliland for seceding from it & taking chunk of coastline in #GulfOfAden rivaling that of breakaway Eritrea

#Somalia also angry at Ethiopia over its support for Somaliland #secessionists & for harboring ambitions to build a #NavalBase in Somaliland
⬇️