In the quest to bring you the best news from the best upcoming releases, we’re going to have to travel all the way to Mexico for this review. Hailing from the city of Tijuana – whose biggest exports now are machinery parts, petroleum products, and death metal – Unidad Trauma is a mix of various different metal subgenres and sounds, all expertly mixed and crafted together into one large bowl of gristle and experimental sound. On April 17th, Concreto Records will drop the band’s sophomore release – “Paradigma Egocéntrico Fatalista” – on to the innocent masses like a nuclear bomb of pestilence and burning flesh. I’m lucky enough to have gotten my hands on the album early, and boy is it a nasty ride.
For fans of such bands as Brujeria, Cattle Decapitation, Carcass, Suffocation, Autopsy, Nile, and Dying Fetus, this will be the best new thing to grace their ears; Or, rather, mutilate their ears. The album is sickly and deranged. Following the atmospheric greeting from the introductory track, the first major instrument we hear in this project is the groovy, almost thrash-adjacent bass line in “Cap. 1 – Del Tratamiento Al Tormento”. This is immediately followed by the drums – drums that are very clearly worshipping at the altars of Dying Fetus’s most influential works. With sirens blaring and the rhythm section forging a good foundation for what the song will become, it could only be followed up with riffs that spark and bite at their guitarists fingers.
The vocals help make this record what it really is. Cattle Decapitation would be fools to never take this band on tour, considering the way that their vocalist can belt this gurgling,goblinish burps and guttural noises. The balance between the black metal highs and the death metal lows is impressive. This duality gives the band the kind of multifaceted sound that dances the lines between the lines of black metal and death metal. And of course, with spastic moments of cruel, anguishing frenzy, the band unleashes a hyper active grindcore influence that the casual metal head may not be prepared for. After those skin scraping, tooth grinding moments of uninhibited sonic insanity, the band regroups their sound, putting it back on its leash, and pulling it back into more rhythmic, blackened areas of sound. This ability to push and pull the way that the track dips between channels of sound is truly impressive. Not every band can pull that off as well as Unidad Trauma has.
In terms of lyricism, it’s hard to give a true opinion of the lyrics – they’re in Spanish, which is really great, but I don’t personally speak the language. I do have a personal adoration for bands that perform in their native tongue, though. As a student of translingualism and the magic that can happen between translation, I’ve always given big props to bands that stick to their roots. Now, what I can say about the album’s lyricism is rather in terms of general thematics. Paradigma Egocéntrico Fatalista is a concept record, and a truly fascinating one at that. Based on the terrifying case of Hisachi Ouchi, each song is a chapter of the very-real story of a man who lived through 83 days in a rapidly decaying body which had been exposed to nuclear radiation. Unidad Trauma tells this cruel tale through the eyes of the doctors and witnesses who lived through the experience with him, and the result is a harrowing vessel of an album. I could almost feel my own skin burning and rotting from exposure to each track.
If that’s your thing, then put April 17th on your calendar – and if you’re feeling particularly brave – you can catch them on tour right now! The tour dates are down below, I encourage checking them out!
April 13 – Tijuana, MX – Republica de Hops
April 14 – San Diego, CA – Tower Bar
April 15 – Las Vegas, NV – The Griffin
April 16 – Tucson, AZ – URBNXN Tucson
April 17 – El Paso, TX – Club 101
April 18 – San Antonio, TX – Hi Tones
April 19 – Dallas, TX – Three Links
April 20 – Houston, TX – TBA
April 22 – Albuquerque, NM – The Launchpad
April 23 – Mesa, AZ – Nile Underground
April 24 – Los Angeles, CA – Knucklehead
