Description

Black vinyl with lyric insert. Limited 400 copies

Capilla Ardiente feature a couple of Chilean doomsters from Procession, and while I’m not sure why they decided they needed to release this under a different name, it’s clear they have enough vision to really do whatever they want. It seems that bassist Claudio Botarro wrote most of the material himself prior to his joining Procession, and recruited some guys to help him record it, one of them being Procession singer Felipe Plaza. Capilla Ardiente play pretty much straight-up epic doom in the vein of Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus especially, featuring soaring vocals and strident riffs with vaguely eastern-sounding touches. Really, the vocals are a major strong point of the whole affair, and while Plaza is versatile in style, here he sticks to an approach that reminds me most of an early Rob Lowe, with a high clear mournful tenor, no vibrato. He also somewhat resembles Johan Langquist in his lower register. Basically, Plaza is very good at giving us exactly what we want and expect from an epic doom singer. His performance is polished and professional, but also emotional and moving. Of course, this isn’t just a one-man show; the Botarro-penned riffs are excellent as well, but Solve et Coagula is more about the entire song structures than the individual riffs. The EP comprised of two long songs, appropriately named Solve and Coagula, each broken into two parts. While the songs both top ten minutes they don’t feel long at all. These aren’t merely standard-format verse/chorus songs with extended bridges, but rather they’re quite progressive and consist of multiple sections that flow well, which in theory are supposed to fit together into one long track spanning the entire EP. Solve for example is divided into Part I: Materia Vulgar and Part II: Disolucion. The first part is a slow, stately, almost oratorio-like piece, beginning with the bass, followed by the vocals, and only joined by the rest of the instruments after more than a minute. The effect is arresting rather than driving, with the riffs alternating with the vocal lines (think Black Dog but less blatant). Then after a minute or so of that the song explodes into Part II with a wailing guitar solo over a much more conventional driving doom riff, a syncopated plod with an eastern-sounding noodly bit on the end that gets your head banging and your feet stomping. The building of tension in the first part through musical stasis and the release of it through the movement of the traditional groove is extremely effective. Coagula on the other hand isn’t quite as strong I think, lacking that excellent juxtaposition, but it continues in the vein of the latter part of Solve very capably.

Track listing:
1. Solve (part I: Materia Vvlgar, part II: Disolvcion)
2. Coagula (part III: Phoenicopervs, part IV: Coagvlacion)