Pandemmy – Faithless
Pandemmy – Faithless
Self-Released
Release Date: 10/10/2024
Running Time: 46:29
Review by Victor Augusto
9/10
It’s not new knowledge, for everyone who read my reviews, that I love seeing bands evolving year after year, when they’re frequently releasing and embarking on all the tours/promotions around them. Most of the cases I see come from new young bands, but here we have a different case. I only discovered Pandemmy when I reviewed their last album “Subversive Need” (2020), but they were not a new band. The only thing new, at that time, was the lineup change, considering the guitarist Guilherme Silva had become the vocalist too.
I don’t remember if I thought about hearing the most mature album of the band, because I hadn’t heard the previous albums when I discovered them. Now, I have enough knowledge to affirm that this new release is the best Pandemmy album! It can sound silly, but when you have a band with so many album releases and more than 10 years on the road, it is for sure a huge achievement. Maybe the first thing that made me love this record was how they are playing a brutal Death/Thrash Metal straight up, and to the point. It is fast and heavy in a good measure.
Maybe the subjects that the band explores help them to have this anger to play. Pandemmy is highlighting all the atrocities we are seeing around the world, like the war in Gaza and all manifestations we have in Brazil. By the way, the song ‘Manifesto (Antifascista)’, is one of the most brutal tracks in my opinion and it is explained by its Portuguese title (that means Antifa Manifest) dedicated to the former President of Brazil.
A fun fact of all the Pandemmy albums that I’ve reviewed is the post production adding of a few noises or elements to highlight the music. In their last album, I remember getting scared of the burning wood noise on the track ‘Deforestation’ which is about all the Amazonia burning we were suffering in 2020. This time, ‘Every War Needs a God’ starts with something like an interference when you are trying to find the correct frequency of a radio station. I really thought that I was having serious trouble with my speakers until I realised that it was coming from the music.
There are more things like that, such as the Moroccan Raja Club Athletic (Raja Casa Blanca) anthem at the end of ‘This Land Will Never Disappear’, which is a team that strongly supports Palestine in this war. The most interesting one is the speech in Arabic along the ‘Orphaned Land Never Existed’ which sounds like a lament while having the band offering a soundtrack for it as support.
From all the highlights in this album, the musical side is one that makes it beautiful. The guitar work is amazing! Very mature riffs and incredible solos. It is very complex to compose songs inside such an aggressive style without being massive, but Pandemmy do it very well! The synergy among all members is amazing.
I believe the most positive goal of Pandemmy is exactly how they express their feelings along with their music and put their passion in the compositions. In a Heavy Metal scenario, full of soulless releases, it is something rare. In a world full of soulless people, it shows that we can still have faith over human beings. As a result, “Faithless” looks like their prime over everything they’ve already done.
‘The Shadow’ (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
TRACKLISTING:
01. The Shadow
02. Every War Needs a God
03. This Land Will Never Disappear
04. Fatal Choice
05. Manifesto (Antifascista)
06. Selective Love
07. Blood Never Lies
08. Orphaned Land Never Existed
09. World Beyond (Bonus Track)
10. Mina [The Curse_s Rise] (Bonus Track)
LINE-UP:
Guilherme Silva – Vocals, Guitars
Pedro Valença – Guitars
Aquiles Albino – Bass
LINKS:
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