Released just before the Christmas period, via fellow independent label No Me Escucho Records, the debut EP, “A Weaker Sun”, by Zudpöl, the Argentinian project by [S], the mastermind behind the Occult /Neo-Classical /Industrial /Dark Folk act Kazeria, whose uncanny echoes reverberate in the martial and austere drum machines and at times epic layered chants, presents 5 tracks rife with a glacial and stark, as well as an unmistakable monochromatic 80s inflected sound, crafted with painstaking and sober accuracy, clearly indebted to the most mournful, solemn and atmospheric dark Post-Punk spawned from the Factory Records catalog, The Sounds, and French Coldwave, steeped in a gloomy and earnest imaginary of pensive melancholy and decaying poetry.
The Buenos Aires based musician carves haunting romantic introspections bathed in the lights and shadows of hope and regret, through chilling, cutting, and mechanical rhythms of kraut-tinged reiterations, endless lithe and pulsating bleak basslines, showers of effect-laden atmospheric guitars and fluid synth drifts, as in the opening “Remember (Empty Oceans)” and the title track, to build obscure glimmering auras that lurk ominously, framing cold stoic vocal nihilism left brooding in the memories of better days, taking the listener on a wander around the darkest edges of the soul.
At times the pace is getting more urgent and the 6-strings more abrasive as in the jagged and syncopate “Noir” as well in the frenzied, tight yet paralyzing menace of “Alone”, to fading hopelessly into the grey, contemplating and nostalgic wide horizons of “Karelia”.
Definitely a remarkable work, edgy, emotional and immersive at the right point in the atmospheres of sheer wintry magnetism, likewise essential and elegant in the arrangements.
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