Hailing from the Columbian underground and under the Enclave Magico Indomito banner comes Delictii and their second release Portales de Guerra Astral. This is a deeply atmospheric and esoteric album with heavy influence from dark chaos magicks of the occult underground. With hypnotic and raw psychedelic atmosphere and a strong traditional South American black metal sound, Delictii fits perfect well with the extensive and powerful catalog of Latin American black metal. The album is incredibly robust with plenty of memorable riffs that’ll be engrained into your psyche for the days to come.
With a haunting introduction, the album creeps into its full form through swirling psychedelic riffs, unending blast beats and ghastly vocals that strikes a cold chill down the listeners spine. The album all through out has this wall of sound theme thanks to the powerful blast beats that are very tight and well executed. The guitars, feeling rather distant thanks to the rough production style, has this strange effect where, its not memorable at first, but slowly grows on you and plants a seed that, even when the song ends, you keep wanting to come back to the punishing tracks that wraps you in a dark and warm embrace, almost comforting in a way. Its a throw back to the early Darkthrone releases of Under a Funeral Moon and Total Death with a touch bit more thrash in there to give it that Latin maniac edge. This release as a whole feels much older than its time, something like a relic lost to the past only uncovered again in the modern age. Due to these hypnotic themes, there’s a lot of similarities between the tracks, flowing almost seamlessly together, weaving a dense tapestry of occult sounds. The vocals are few and far between, sounding like a lost specter wandering through the void. They’re an interesting touch, but rather forgettable at times, and add very little to the over all album, as its rather instrumental heavy. There are some touches of synths here and there, giving the release an epic and mystical feeling that again, is a throw back to the golden days of Black Metal.
The album as a whole relies rather heavily on the atmosphere it builds, with little variation on the song writing itself, it sorta feels a bit too similar at times, especially the first two tracks. The riffs on the faster blast beat sections of the first track sound very similar to the parts on the second, the main difference being that the second track is only a few notes off making the riff sound more ‘triumphant’. If you weren’t paying attention though, you’d think they’d be apart of the same track just different sections. The blast beats are done in the same pattern and it even continues onto the third track, with again very little variation on the guitars. This is rather common among black metal releases that carry the torch a little bit too close to the old Norwegian 90s and something I feel can be a bit of a draw back on this album, making it sound all a bit too much the same.
Even with that being said though, this album still holds up very well, and the fourth and fifth tracks is where I feel it shines the most, with eerie melodic guitar passages that break up the relentless onslaught of blast beats adding to the overall dark psychedelia atmosphere the album brings which I feel makes the album stand out amongst the underground. The ‘final’ and fifth track of the album Coronación is what I feel like the album should’ve began with and then also ended with. A very psychedelic riff with ambient recordings of the background that feels fresh out of the mind of a modern shaman in their home, coming down from an intense trip meeting the dark gods of the void.
The true final track, a hidden unnamed sixth track sound to me like a live recording of a previous song, either from their first release ‘Oculto Aristocrático Black Metal‘ or perhaps from a live performance of a track from this album, maybe the first one, but its strangely grounding with its bootleg style recording and nearly inaudible riffs and drumming. It sorta brings you back down from this trip of an EP and reminds you its all just some sorta recording.
This is an outstanding release and something I found incredible charming from start to finish, even if a bit tiring at times. It may be a bit of a mission to listen to, but its truly rewarding at the end. A recommendation to all occult black metal scholars.
Delictii is a great Band, I recommend listening the albums of felonías and perplejica also from the enclave mágico indómito label.