Artist: Valturn
Country: Puerto Rico
Label: The Black Candles
Formats: Digital Demo
Year: 2025
Whether or not Valturn was a product of the raging COVID pandemic or not, but this Puerto Rican Black Metal project was founded during these turbulent times. Yet, that didn’t stop these guys from being rather productive. Especially within the first months of their existence they cranked out an impressive amount of releases. But after a series of demos, splits and two full-length albums, suddenly everything came to an abrupt end in 2023. ‘Magical Shadows Of A Tragic Past’ is the first sign of life from the band since ‘Malignant Supremacist’ that was released through Jems Label in the summer of 2023.
Like many of you I also wondered what we were getting with this new digital demo, released under the banner of The Black Candle. Its title is a rather unsubtle reference to Mütiilation. By naming your release after the opening track of ‘Vampires Of Black Imperial Blood’, Mütiilation’s most iconic album, you are actually making quite a bold statement.
Or, maybe not. It turned that the closing track of this demo is just a cover of that rather monumental Mütiilation song. Although I have nothing against cover songs in principle, I think it might have been smarter to give this demo a different title. At least that would have prevented some scepticism on my part. But then again, who am I?
Now that I’ve already touched upon the Mütiilation track, let’s start with that one, despite it being the closing track of the three songs offered on ‘Magical Shadows Of A Tragic Past’. The original song is, as commonly known, a rather harsh song from a rather crude sounding album. That is pretty well mimicked by the Puerto Ricans, even so much so that it takes quite a bit of adjusting to it after the very interesting first two own compositions. As a whole, Vasturn doesn’t add a whole lot to the song to make it their own, it basically sounds like a band rehearsing a Mütiilation song. Honestly, the added value of this song is questionable.
The first two songs, on the contrary are very good. Honestly, there is a bit of that Les Légions Noires vibe to those own compositions as well, but especially as this 20-plus-minutes demo progreses, it gets a bit more atmospheric. Yet, without really going to Atmospheric Black Metal regions. It is just doomy and moody, a thoroughly mournful atmosphere that typifies lots of late 90’s Black Metal that didn’t go for the 666 BPM-variant. This way, both tracks might bear a resemblance with the early stages of that hypnotizing sort of Black Metal that was mainly cultivated by American bands like Xasthur and Leviathan.
If you’re still looking for that raw sound of early Xasthur, Krohm or perhaps even pre-album Forgotten Tomb, this is definitely a good demo to check out. The slow pace and its lingering dreary atmosphere is definitely depressive enough to get you into full autumn mood. These first songs show these youngsters have quite a bit of talent, let’s just forget that highly unnecessary Mütiilation cover.
