Ashes in Sapphire - From Twilight to Light (2021)

Country: Ecuador
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 26 Feb 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Prog Archives | YouTube

Hailing from Guayaquil in Ecuador, Ashes in Sapphire seems to be mostly a one man project, that one man being Christhian Zambrano. He plays all the instruments on this album except the drums, which are the work of Panos Geo, and the strings on Symphony in Blue, which were contributed by a couple of guests, Maria Trejo and Paula SantaCruz. He also contributes all the vocals, except the female voice on Symphony in Blue, which belongs to the Dutch singer Micky Huijsmans. He wrote all the music and lyrics, produced the album and presumably put the kettle on in between recording sessions too.

He describes what he does as electronic progressive metal, which is fair enough, but people expecting metal may be disappointed at how light it is. Even when the guitars are chugging along, the piano is more overt in the foreground. I'd call this progressive rock that merely happens to have some chunky riffs on occasion. People coming in to it expecting prog rock would have nothing to be disappointed in at all, because this finds an agreeable vibe, one that's almost but not quite like anything we've heard before.

Equilibrium is a decent opening song proper, but it's Blank Canvas that grabbed my attention. It has very organic, pulsing keyboards and the guitars try to emulate that when they heavy up a little, but I would call the rest of this song deceptively delicate. The vocal is delivered in the Peter Gabriel style and it interacts with the piano rather than the guitars, even when the guitars ramp up (and the whole song does build very nicely). It's a surprisingly complex song that somehow makes itself seem simple and accessible and that's a particularly neat trick for any prog rock musician to master.

The heart of the album is Symphony in Blue and I wonder if that was a deliberate choice. This is a first album for Ashes in Sapphire and, if Zambrano thinks of it as a metal band, he may be thinking of this as a go forward style. There's a lot of keyboard work here, but it's the guitars that drive this one with a solid chugging riff. It's phrased as a duet and Huijsmans usually sings symphonic metal, for a Dutch band called End of the Dream. She's more restrained here, not soaring off into the stratosphere, but the interplay is nice and there's still a lot of dynamic play going on, especially with a late midsection that's really most of the second half.

Symphony in Blue runs almost eight minutes but it's not the epic on this album. That honour goes to the closer, From Twilight to Light, which runs over twelve. It builds very well, from a rock opening to metal during the midsection and then back to rock to wrap up. It's hardly the best song here, though it doesn't outstay its welcome. Zambrano provides a neat bass, as he did on Cenizas and Symphony in Blue. It finds its vibe and milks it well.

It does remind that, while nothing here lets the side down and there's no filler, some of the pieces of music here are lesser to others. For instance, Under the Rain is a decent song, if listened to separately, but it doesn't do anything that Blank Canvas did better only one song earlier. She Wasn't Dreaming is a decent piece of music too, but it seems more like a warmup exercise than a song proper. And, at the end of the album, the title track is decent too, but it doesn't seem to warrant twelve minutes of album time.

I'll see it all as growing pains. My impression is that Zambrano is a talented songwriter and musician, but he's still figuring out exactly what he wants to write and perform. I have a feeling that his second album as Ashes in Sapphire may be a little different. I'm interested to see how.

Curare - Portales de los Andes (2019)

Country: Ecuador
Style: Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 4 Jan 2019
Sites: Facebook | Reverb Nation

Now this is an interesting sound! Curare tend to be labelled as a folk metal band from Ecuador, and that's kind of true but not how you might expect.

For a start, the band veer from rock to metal and back and there's as much here that stems from Primus or the Red Hot Chili Peppers as the likes of Finntroll or Skyclad. The closest metal band for comparison might be Sepultura because of the rhythms used but I should emphasise that Curare don't sound at all like Sepultura, even in heavier moments like on Guambrita or Kayawé.

For another, folk metal bands tend to be labelled as such because of instrumentation with a lot less variation apparent in the vocals, but Curare's singers don't sound folk metal in the slightest. The band could be called heavy folk funk as easily as folk metal, but there's a hardcore influence too and ethnic sounds that aren't rooted in the Andes, like a section in Machalí reminiscent of a Jacques Tati soundtrack.

By the time this album reached Machalí, a fascinating track halfway that includes the Andean flute as a lead instrument, it became clear that Curare should not be defined by their many varied influences and can only be described by what sort of bill they'd fit best on. Even though there's metal underpinning a lot of their sound, I wouldn't see them as out of place on a bill with gypsy punks Gogol Bordello and the similarly patchwork Spanish musician Manu Chao. I listen to Super Taranta and Próxima Estación: Esperanza often and could easily see adding Portales de los Andes to that habit.

It's an interesting album from the outset and every track delivers, but once you've heard just how interesting it gets, the first four tracks start to feel conventional. Given that Tihuanaco begins with flute and maracas over playful bass and guitar and continues in heavier style with chanting hardcore vocals, it's only by contrast to what's still to come that it's conventional.

Inga o Mandinga starts out funky but turns into prog rock. Caranqui - Conchasquí is the most consistently metal song on the album, at least for four minutes until the flute starts to float over the rhythmic pounding that closes out the track. Les Tambours du Bronx could have guested here without seeming at all out of place. Viaje Astral adds more of that flute/drum combo in the middle of what is much more of a progressive track, but the ethnic feel comes as much from the vocals as the flute; at points it almost enters ritual territory.

It's Machalí that first highlights what this band can really do, though. Kicking off with Jew's harp and a guitar that sounds like a carillon and intricate drum patterns, it adds that reedy flute before venturing into progressive territory that starts out metal but becomes jazz. Then we get accordion in the French style and we suddenly find ourselves listening to this folk prog jazz metal world group in a Parisian café. This is fascinating stuff and it ends with flute, hardcore lead vocal and a sort of choral backing. Wow.

Nothing else touches Machalí for sheer uniqueness, though Guambrita comes close. The rest of the album doesn't fade away though, as there's much more to discover and each track is completely different. If anything, the second half is more imaginative than the first and more rooted in Andean melodies. The third standout track is the final one, Puntiatzil, which is an oddly laid back way to wrap up but a good one.

I'm not finding much about Curare in English, but Google Translate tells me that this is their fifth album since their founding in 2001. I'm highly interested in finding the others.