Artist: Repúdio
Country: Portugal
Label: Altare Productions
Formats: LP / Cassette Tape
Year: 2025
Not too long ago I read a serious piece of writing in which a fairly seasoned Black Metal fan wondered, while writing, what exactly “Raw Black Metal” or “Lo-Fi Black Metal” is and why, despite over 30 years of experience in Extreme Metal, he just didn’t understand it. There is something elitist about the phenomenon of “acquired taste,” but in essence there is a grain of truth here. Some things in life are not for everyone. And that has nothing to do with “good taste” or anything of the sort. To skip all too easy parallels with, say, blue cheese, marmite or olives, I can couch this debut album by Repúdio as an example.
On the preceding demo tape from only a couple of weeks ago, released on December 1st of 2024, this new Portuguese band has taken its first but firm steps in the world of ultimately Raw Black, borderline Lo-Fi even. That path is continued on ‘Transcrito De Cinza’. The title translates as ‘Transcribed From Grey’ or ‘Grey Transcript’ and is highly symbolic for what the music has to offer. It is all very monochromatic, the texture of the music is rather grainy and overall rough – not just at the edges. Especially towards the end of the album, things are getting increasingly more harsh and more difficult to swallow.
And that is where that person from introduction above is failing to wrap his head around. To me, this is undeniably Black Metal, but I can follow the people who are making a case saying that this sort of music is noise. Artistic noise, but noise nonetheless. The riffs in here are very hard to distinguish and do not even have a very pronounced sound, in fact it is a whirling chaos produced by guitars. Some sort of drugged ritual dance in which the eerie vocals fully participate. The only more or less “normal” part here is that played by the drums, they are the pulse of the album, making sure that it stays within the range of what we could arguably still call Black Metal.
So, acquired taste or not. This first full-length album by Repúdio is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, that’s for sure. But if you are able to appreciate the rawest bits and pieces of bands like Black Cilice, than this might be an album that can tickle your fancy. This is, indeed, practically the same sort of typically Portuguese harsh sounding, Lo-Fi Black Metal, yet Repúdio has quite a bit more of that hallucinatory, kaleidoscopic beauty of Candelabrum’s very first recordings. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder…
