ORTHODOX - Sentencia

The saga of Spain's Orthodox continues with “Sentencia”, their third record in three years of activity.

On the path that led them to the grandiloquent, spacious scenarios of this new work, they initially showed off a monolithic heaviness with “Gran Poder”, before reaching full maturity with the progressive jazz-doom of “Amanecer en Puerta Oscura”. Now, in just over half an hour, the Seville band show their intent to condense their ideas into a more reflective sound, one that in some ways also moves closer to the avant-garde jazz evolutions for which their beloved Coltrane is certainly an unavoidable beacon.

The echo of the American saxophonist rings loud and clear right from the title of the lengthy “Ascensìon”, a chiaroscuro excursion into the territory of a free-jazz poised between oppressive asceticism and purifying tension. Amid accumulations and dispersals, this is music that reveals itself to be intimately evocative, and in its constant dialogue with silence it also carves out deeply mood-driven interstices. Many passages, however, fail to be as effective as they aim to be, and the climax, reached around the fifteen-minute mark, ends up feeling, how shall we put it, "forced", even if the free-form drift still offers plenty in terms of sensitivity and allure.

A bit scattershot, then, this new Orthodox outing, even though here and there the signs of a compelling and rather original sonic exploration still assert themselves. With “Sentencia”, however, the band hits a stumbling block, not least because the picture is rounded out by two tracks of limited scope: on one hand, the martial, Morricone-esque procession of “Marcha de la Santa Sangre” (in which trumpet and guitar paint desert vistas steeped in melancholy torpor); on the other, a “…y la Muerte no Tendrá Dominio” dominated, in a solemn atmosphere, by the organ's lofty sonorities.

Perhaps, before diving into their first two records, this is the place to start.  

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06/10/2009