Sentient Ruin Laboratories
SHADOWS - Out For Blood LP
After the pure magic and fire of the Into the Nightmare demo tape, Sentient Ruin bring you the full-scale successor and evolution: the debut album by Chilean heavy metal cult SHADOWS. Taking us back to a time, somewhere in the early '80s, when acts like Mercyful Fate, Satan, Death SS, Judas Priest, and Alice Cooper were laying the unforgettable foundations of what would soon become a generational, industry-changing phenomenon: the defining of heavy metal as we know it. A raging and undying fire of searing leads, thundering drums, spooky operatic vocals, ripping guitars, unforgettable hooks and outrageous transgression.
Shadows has conceived a classic metal crucible of unparalleled wizardry and dominance, using familiar concepts borrowed from dark b-movies, old comic strips, occultism and esotericism to take the listener down a dark, left-hand path of cinematic storytelling, thrilling fantasy, dark impulses and transgressive paranoia. The ten tracks display a breadth of tricks and expertise rarely seen at such an accomplished level in contemporary NWOTHM and classic metal acts, and this should come as no surprise knowing that Shadows mastermind and main songwriter John Shades (Cristian Silva of Apostasy), has been shaping the pillars of true and untamed underground South American heavy metal for at least 3 decades. Using a mist of dark, keyboard-laden atmospheres, vorticose melodies and a dominating, dual attack of criss-crossing, blazing razor-sharp solos, Shades and his co-conspirators have unfolded a half-hour of absolute, boundless imagination, covering almost fifty years of heavy metal evolution and transformation, and delving deep into the primordial fabric of the genre's most defining traits, those of technical extremism, frantic intensity, and adrenaline-pumping darkness.