Labels: Alone (Spain)
Review by: Alex Deller
Continuing on down their strange path, Seville’s avant-somethingers Orthodox appear to have pretty much ditched the lead-heavy Sleepiness that was exhibited on “Gran Poder” and already on a shaky peg by the time they’d cranked out its excellent follow-up “Amanecer En Puerta Oscura,” rife as it was with jazzy affectations and frequent descents into proggy weirdness. With “Sentencia” they seem to have gone fully batshit, brief opener “Marcha De La Santa Sangre” wiffling into life with ponderous drum taps and stringy guitar lines while a mournful lone trumpet leads the way before things plunge headlong into the meat of “Ascension,” a half-hour piece that begins with a piano falling down the stairs in slow motion before righting itself and proceeding to rustle about with secretive percussive scuffles and bizarre, quavering vocals. Things certainly don’t get much saner from there on in, with things veering from clamouring intensity to winding experimentation and back again until “…Y La Muerte No Tendra Dominio” leads us quietly but firmly to the door with a bout of gloomy church organ atmospherics that leave us blinking quizzically up at the sun and barely any the wiser than when we started.