IGNORED (ARG) – S/T – 2021 🇬🇧
“La belleza de la desobediencia” (The beauty of disobedience) is the instrumental intro that explodes with a heavy black metal feeling, after some cacophonous sounds, and it serves as the introduction to IGNORED, one of the newcomers of the Argentine metal scene. The name of this track also summarizes, in a certain way, its message against all authoritarianism, acts of discrimination, and abuse of society; in addition to motivating all listeners to raise their voices. That is why throughout this album / EP, simply titled S/T, we are going to find a series of songs that carry flags of defense both in the ecological sphere and in different schemes of social struggle.
Focusing on the musical level, the band based in Mendoza, in the west of Argentina, offers us an acid style of fierce and ruthless blackened hardcore, but which is strongly influenced by the grindcore of bands like TRAP THEM, MORTALITY RATE, IMPLORE, ROTTEN SOUND. In addition, there is a huge evolution in their sound, compared to what we could hear in “Lxs ignorantxs”, which appealed to the same style, but with a slightly more lo-fi sound that took us back to the times of Sick Bastard, an EP from the band that today leads Keijo Niinimaa. Much of this evolution is due to a superb mix, the product of Marcos Verón himself (the band’s drummer) in his project Siete Cuchillos Records, where the recording and mastering were also carried out.
The songs are short, brutal, and ruthless, and they have no regrets about expressing their vision, as in the case of “Cuna del Dolor” (cradle of pain), which also includes the participation of Luli de Felice from UNRONIN. This song begins with the crude story of the Guatemalan Julia Klug, which covers almost a third of the melody and recounts the atrocities she had to live through. After this cruel oratory, the mayhem begins with his more grindcore side. Paula Delia alternates with Luli to launch powerful vocal lines that materialize in attacks to the Church: “Because of his irreverence, his cross must burn». It seems that the song was beginning to fade but abruptly restarts: “Ruining the lives of those who have no voice / Without being able to defend themselves from the disgust of your religion».
This formula repeats in “Odio masivo” (Mass hate), which has as intro, Agent Smith‘s quote about the virus that he recounts in The Matrix, but in this case, marking a clear contrast between the power and the topic of the song, which is much more explosive, as it has Elaine Campos from RASTILHO, who exhibits a gloomy tone in this song when it comes to supporting the lead vocalist. Outside of these particular songs, the voracity continues throughout the songs, but the hardcore side of the band begins to come out, as in the case of «Basta de impunidad» (Enough impunity) and «Batalla» (Battle), where the choirs of Marcos Verón appear, giving these tonalities; the former maintaining the chaotic rumble of the drums in its first segment, while in the latter, the rhythm drops much more compared to the songs that opened the album, but both are united by the energy of social struggle that they express in their verses. Not even mention the rigor in the lyrics of “Incesto” (Incest), in its expression of the topic and that ending that gives us goosebumps, being a product of a great job by the guitar duo.
IGNORED managed to put out a very solid album, and it really went by very quickly, beyond the fact that it doesn’t last more than 20 minutes, and I think that, with this effort, it manages to win the Revelation of the Year award (if there would be one of those), as it was published in the last weeks of 2021. I will really try to do my bit in order to be attentive to these kinds of projects that are taking place outside our City of Fury, as we call Buenos Aires, which usually concentrates most of the bands that nurture the emerging scene, that surprises just like the one I just described and often come off the hook.
