Originally released in September of 2019 to a limited, but positive and welcoming, scope, Chilean stoner/doom body breakers, Ocultum have recently entered the next stage of their attack by issuing Residue, their second album — fourth, if you count the two live albums in their discography — on January 13th (that’s today!) on vinyl. Sure, releasing an album amid post-holiday malaise, the Omicron variant and supply chain bullshit might not be ideal, but a mere calendar square and the planet being on the back nine of its existence aren’t going to put the brakes on this trio of boulder bashers and their lug nut languidness, which you can pay sonic witness to with a stream below.
We asked the band to introduce themselves to those unfamiliar with their previous 12 years of activity, their “harsh vision of how doom, stoner and sludge must sound at the end of the [world]” and their “lysergic journey, a portal to the human inferno, trying to fuse the listener mind under the magic of the old 70`s Sabbath-ic sound, blended with bone-crushing riffing and drumming, fiercely lobotomizing the senses.” To wit, the trio of Ricardo Robles (drums), Pablo Kataldo (bass) and Sebastián Bruna (guitars/vocals) exhibited no lack of confidence by saying:
“To put it simply, Residue is the slab in the grave of hippie doom in South America. Somehow, we realized that we sounded different from what everyone was doing. There were precedents of heaviness in the area, but it was always the same: either very monotonously heavy or very psychedelic stoned. In addition, in terms of sound and recording, Residue came to demonstrate that a sound similar to that grown in Europe or the USA is possible in South America, with the same means as any studio. Residue has stood the test of time, being released on tape and vinyl by Interstellar Smoke Records from Poland, on tape here in Chile by Manifectation Productions, and some time ago on CD by Black Bow England Records, owned by Conan’s Jon Davis. All this speaks of an album that, while not being extremely well-known, has become an underground gem for those looking for difficult to digest sounds and far from the marketing lights. We are the heaviest sludge band in South America, and any who have a problem with that, must see us play live where we take your sound of flowers and psychedelic rainbows and immerse them in the mud of the raw reality that lives in our streets, in the alleys of junkies crawling for another fix. Residue is a first-rate chronicle of all of this, and here is our heavy weight.”
Vinyl copies of Residue are available in marble green/purple via Interstellar Smoke Records.
Ocultum online:
*Cover artwork by Exequiel Bruna (www.facebook.com/carbuncloolcnubrac)
*Band Photo by Sepulcésar Maureira.
