Cazador
Failure to Thrive
Independent
★★★★
Failure to Thrive lies on the outskirts of the genre. Not fitting in with the doom metal construct because of the saturation of melody and texture, but appealing to the addicts who love their sonic bursts of concrete ripple. Cazador has placed us in a strange world of extreme dynamics via these song experiments. That leaves the listener in a place coiled in confusion yet appreciative of the band’s bravado to take that leap and follow their release, Broken Sun, with an experience you may spend more time trying to understand while retaining something that is unforgettable.
Do you feel like the floor is going to drop? Good. You just listened to “R62.7.” The feedback and white noise builds anxiety. The sonic boom comes in “Skeleton Crew.” An unleashing of emotions from unadulterated temper to confusion from the way the guitars scatter about interchanging power for dissonance. Where does the floor drop? In this case, it is when the band drips into haunting note plucking to accentuate the pseudo-like jazz drumming. It does not last long before anger flares. I feel like I went through the stages of grief in the matter of six minutes.
You don’t know what to expect on Failure To Thrive, and that is the exciting element that drives this element. From ambient guitar texturizing on “Children of Man” to isolationist song crafting on “Edema.” The song ends by its electronic components falling apart into acoustic strumming while staring off into the abyss. “Comey” is the dive into the abyss. Bearing similarities to “Skeleton Crew” while expanding on their sludge metal performance, the band breaks down like a fish out of water. When you get to “Sassafras,” the space between the notes become rifts and each chord is cataclysmic.
The listener goes through a lot. The band, probably more. It takes a lot of mental exertion to pull off an album like this. The melodic moments only make the doom-laden songs more forceful. And the power metal gives the bedroom-eyed instrumentals more expression. Failure To Thrive is an artistic statement.
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