BETWEEN MIRRORS AND PORTRAITS IS THE POWERFUL DEBUT ALBUM FROM THE PORTUGUESE BAND, A LAST DAY ON EARTH. EMOTIVE AND DENSE, BRUTAL AND DEVOTED, BETWEEN MIRRORS AND PORTRAITS IS EQUALLY DIVIDED BETWEEN THE SPANKING HARD EMERGENCY AND THE NOBILITY OF TERDERNESS. RECORDED AND PRODUCED AT ULTRASOUND STUDIOS BY DANIEL CARDOSO – HEAD CONTROL SYSTEM, WAKO, AND HEAVENWOOD RELATED NAME - THIS ALBUM SHOWS US AN AMBITIOUS, EXCITING AND VERY SKILLED BAND. NOTHING WAS LEFT OVERLOOKED HERE! FROM THE AMAZING GRAPHIC WORK OF THE ACCLAIMED DESIGNER JOÃO DIOGO (BIZARRA LOCOMOTIVA, PLASTICA, MIKROBEN KRIEG, XOTOX) TO RICARDO GRAÇA’S (FADE IN, JORNAL DE LEIRIA), EXCELENCE SIGNED PROMOTIONAL PHOTOS, EVERYTHING WAS INTENSILY THOUGHT. THE RESULT COULD NOT BE LESS THAN A MINUCIOUS FULLFILLED RECORD THAT GROWS EVERY SINGLE TIME WE LISTEN TO!
All of the A LAST DAY ON EARTH’s musicians, without any exception, shows us an excellence that could not be possible to a band of teenage beginners. We can feel this unity from the very first sounds of Between Mirrors and Portraits and is, certainly, because of the vast experience that the players acquired in previous and different projects and acts such as the Sunwebbs, Sereal, Mind Probes, Ad Noctum or Hypnotic Sessions... Leiria is the city that hosts the band since it formed back in 2005, but its most natural born place would be California’s Orange County, where the primary hardcore crossovers happened. The A LAST DAY ON EARTH’s music is deliberately sensitive and sentimental (consider, for instance, the deftonean balance of "Gold"), but the content of its hybrid aim and the power of its melodic and rhythmic structures, take them far safely from an eventual annoying status. Valter Geraldes voice is the driving force of the assorted emotional states induced while we listening to Between Mirrors and Portraits, and goes from guttural and semi-deep aggressive (not as serious as the death or grind likes) to the bittersweet and semi-cried sung way (not as pop as the translucent term itself - except in the sorrowfully fraction of "Promise"). Here and there we can recognize an evocation of Jonathan Korn Davies (listen to "hiatus") which does not mean any prejudice to the A LAST DAY ON EARTH’s frontman at all! Moreover, the other guys of the band prove their brilliant attributes especially in the way they manage their own instruments, rising from the perfect marriage between the flattering bass player agility of Miguel Batista, to the metronomic way of the drummer, Bruno Nunes. To all this we can add up the symbiosis of two experienced guitar players such as Ruben Santos and José Couceiro (the harmonics and the riffs of the main title song are magnificent, and slayearean guitar-solo of "The View unseen" is of the same skill). It is hard to choose the highlights of a so balanced record like this, but we can not avoid referring the groove of "Straight Line Blood", certainly the most “radio-friendly” single of Between Mirrors and Portraits. Despite of giving us the idea of a “last day on earth" and leading us into a world full of mirrors whose pictures are not reflected, one of the main qualities of the A LAST DAY ON EARTH’s music is that we can find in almost songs, mutations and smooth changes: even if they are not properly the ultimate storm’s visible rainbow, surely they are slight signs of hope, as if it in the end of the story we could find something else, unremarkable, impossible to categorize, but with an unquestionable and liable existence. "Gone", the epic and fantastic song that closes this essential masterpiece, gives us precisely this sense of journey in a search of something truly earthly divine throughout the infinite outer space... A LAST DAY ON EARTH’s Between Mirrors and Portraits is, undeniably, a surprising and auspicious work that deserves all the attention of both truly heavy stuff headbanger fanatics and open-minded common music lovers!
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