Capilla Ardiente - Where Gods Live and Men Die (2024)^{Release ID: 56090}

The first couple of times I listened to this, I didn't really get much out of it. Do I still like epic doom metal, I thought to myself?
But as I listened to more of the album, it struck me that my problem wasn't me, it was the album. It's not exactly epic doom metal, at least not as I recognize it. It's not epic doom metal, it's doom metal with epic metal attached. It's a doom metal album with a strong Manilla Road influence, and I don't think that combination really works. The crushing, heavy guitars combined with that heroic fantasy feeling is just jarring.
It doesn't help that the four songs on this album don't really do much to distinguish themselves from each other. Without distinguishing themselves, how can they be distinguished against others? Beyond that sense of heaviness, this album doesn't really have much that sticks out in my mind. There are no interesting riffs, heaviness is the point, and the solos are decent enough. The vocalist even just sounds like he's taking after someone else, but not doing it in an interesting way.
While I obviously didn't like the album, I do like that they tried to do something with their music that's just a bit out of left field. I think if they continue in this direction, they should go for something shorter. As contrary as it might seem, the greats used a mix of both short and long songs. Endless epics aren't necessarily better than short songs, and getting your point across in three minutes are as much a skill as making something ten minutes long.

Capilla Ardiente are a five piece from Santiago, Chile and features a couple of members of doom crew, Procession, along with vocalist, Felipe Plaza Kutzbach, of Deströyer 666, who also provided vocals for this years "Ancient Doom Metal" album from legendary russian epic doomers, Scald. They play epic doom metal, and I mean with an emphasis on the EPIC. Only one of the four tracks on offer here clock in at less than ten minutes and musically and aesthetically they have as much in common with power metal as they do doom. Sure, the riffs are pure epic doom metal, but the overwrought and histrionic vocals, the shred-like guitar solos and the melodramatic songwriting all scream power metal to me. I can hear where they have clearly taken influence from the likes of Rich Walker's Solstice or Solitude Aeternus, in fact Kutzbach has toured with Solstice as the band's live vocalist on a couple of occasions, but where the great epic doom acts succeed is that they keep the inbuilt pompousness and excess of epic metal under control and exercise restraint when utilising the more overblown aspects of the genre, whereas here the chileans give free rein to all the most bombastic elements of their sound. Make comparison, for example, between Felipe Plaza Kutzbach's performance here compared to that he turned in for "Ancient Doom Metal" and I think that most people would agree his performance is more OTT and less controlled than that he gave on the Scald album. sounding eminently more like a power metal singer than a doom metal vocalist. For my money, epic doom is best when built around the aesthetic of a mournful and sombre yearning for lost glories, whereas "Where Gods Live and Men Die" feels more like power metal's grandiose and bombastic celebration of hegemony.

This certainly isn't a bad record by any means, when they get it right, such as with the hugely mournful riffs and more reflective vocals of "Now Here. Nowhere." it is actually very good, but too often it emphasises the epic side of the genre at the expense of the doom-laden and that will always illicit are more negative response from me. Performance-wise, the guys are technically very good and the production is nice and meaty, occasionally allowing the more doomy moments to shine through. The songwriting is quite good, although they go for a bit more complexity than is the norm for the genre, giving the individual tracks somewhat of a progressive feeling. Undoubtedly, it is a more memorable affair than the previous album with some very effective riffs, but its overly bombastic approach leaves me unlikely to be returning to it too often in the future I think. Still, if your tolerance for this more overblown approach is higher than mine, then there may well be plenty of meat for you to get your teeth into here but for me it's all a bit too much.