With a fist-in-the-air grandstanding chorus and theatrical metallic chug in its tense verse, Albez Duz‘s ‘Our Lord, the Flayed One’ was a highlight of the Berlin outfit’s 2016 third album, Wings of Tzinacan (review here). The record basked in goth atmospherics and found its way fluidly into more extremely metallic fare, as does the track in question with its later, pre-solo section of deathly growls, but maintained a progressive feel darkened in its ambience and given a classic edge through interplay of organ and other sonic flourish. In other words, shit was complex. Had a lot going on.

What held it together, however, was that hook. The song almost stops to make way for vocalist Alfonso Brito Lopez to deliver the title line, and rightly so. Lopez‘s power as a singer is evident all throughout the track — and the album, for that matter — and in company with the fervent push of founding drummer and multi-instrumentalist Eugen Herbst (formerly of Dies Ater) and the cast-in-molten-steel guitar work of Julia Neuman, Albez Duz paint a complete sonic portrait that easily crosses genre lines from a doomed center while remaining grounded in a relatively straightforward, structured delivery that doesn’t feel any more self-indulgent than it should given its inherent drama and atmospheric thrust.

Albez Duz recently completed a short tour of Germany and Austria, including a stop at the Live Evil fest in their hometown where they played alongside a deeply varied bill including Aura Noir, Bang, Possession, Solstice, Cauldron and others. Though it’s over, I mention it because it’s a particularly all-over-the-place lineup and yet there doesn’t seem to have been an individual band involved with whom Albez Duz would be out of place sharing a stage. The way their sound plays to multiple sides, and the coherent, encompassing spirit of the material they bring to bear on Wings of Tzinacan is both deeply individualized and able to engage on different levels of familiarity.

Dig into the odd, vaguely S&M-themed video for “Our Lord, the Flayed One” below, and enjoy:

Albez Duz, “Our Lord, the Flayed One” official video

Music video for OUR LORD THE FLAYED ONE by ALBEZ DUZ.

Album / Wings of Tzinacan.
Label / LISTENABLE RECORDS

Shot and Directed by Achilleas Gatsopoulos. Editing by Eugen Herbst and Andreas Hofmann. Colour Correction & Grading by HYPNAGOGIA. Performance footage filmed on location at DU BEAST, Berlin. Makeup by Bella Grigoryants. Camera assistant & Stills Photography by Tenia Dimakopoulou. Tezcatlipoca footage filmed at HOLY MOUNTAIN STUDIOS, Berlin. Tezcatlipoca ….. Valenting Tszin. Makeup by Sonya Sounyaeva. Styling by Achilleas Gatsopoulos. Camera assistant & Stills Photography by Henni-Maria.

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[Click play above to stream Albez Duz’s Wings of Tzinacan in full. Album is out Oct. 28 via Listenable Records.]

In its use of Aztec language (actually Nahuatl) as well as its cover art and sound, Wings of Tzinacan is very much a follow-up to Albez Duz‘s 2014 sophomore outing, The Coming of Mictlan (review here). Released as their first through Listenable Records, it finds the Berlin-based cult rockers working as a trio, with founding drummer/multi-instrumentalist Eugen Herbst (ex-Dies Irae) and vocalist Alfonso Brito Lopez having brought on guitarist Julia Neuman — they’ve done live shows as a five-piece, and also currently list David Petersen as a full-time member, so the situation seems in some flux — and further codifying the gothic themes of the preceding record in a way that draws their various stylistic sides together into one cohesive statement.

That statement comes loaded with echoing spaces, weighted groove, righteously dark melodies, top-grade organ work on songs like “Our Lord the Flayed One,” and adds up to an eight-track/51-minute excursion into murk that calls to mind Type O Negative and The Butterfly Effect-era Moonspell as much as Paradise Lost while still retaining an identity of its own in its sense of atmosphere, depth of mix and arrangement flourish. More perhaps than its predecessor, Wings of Tzinacan — the word translates to “bat” — steps forward with a singular idea of what it wants to do. Where The Coming of Mictlan explored a range of ideas, and Wings of Tzinacan operates similarly, the third album moves ahead from the second by having those ideas push further toward a singular emotional and sonic expression.

All of that said, I don’t necessarily think one has to have heard The Coming of Mictlan, which was released through Iron Bonehead and Archaic Sounds, to appreciate what Albez Duz have on offer here. Lopez delivers a striking performance in classic metal frontman fashion, and the instrumental arrangements behind him — from the full-toned headbang roll of second track “Reflections” through the calling bats of “Tzinacan’s Rising” to the grueling desolation of the penultimate “Death Whistle,” in which volume ebbs and flows but the lurching sense of agony remains constant — engage with both their diversity of approach and how that approach never veers from the mission of best serving the song at hand and the album as a whole. Each half of Wings of Tzinacan begins with its longest track, and while I’m not sure exactly of the vinyl structure — that is, as a 51-minute CD/digital stretch, it’s possible one or two songs don’t appear on the LP for time constraint — the immersion both of them bring about helps set up what the ensuing portion of the record has to offer.

With opener “The Uprising,” the metallic chug prominent early in its 9:44 run builds in intensity but gives way toward the midsection to reunion-era Celtic Frost-type malevolence, slower, meaner, wider, and the arrival of keys signals a transition into a longer atmospheric break. Satisfyingly, they return to the central riff before finishing out, and in accord, “Reflections” and “Our Lord the Flayed One” both offer a blend of straightforward-ish hooks and grand-in-the-presentation downer atmospherics — the latter delving into extreme metal growls and shred late while still keeping a relatively moderate tempo; a fascinating meld rarely so fluidly executed — before the quieter, mournful organ of “Innocence Gate” begins a turn toward some of the broader-reaching material that “Sacred Flame” (the longest inclusion at 9:46) will establish as the course for Wings of Tzinacan‘s unfolding side B.

“Innocence Gate” is also a transition in a sense of how it plays out with the songs surrounding, and by that I mean how it picks up from “Our Lord the Flayed One” and leads into “Sacred Flame.” Where “The Uprising,” “Reflections” and “Our Lord the Flayed One” stand alone and certainly each cut has its personality, particularly as the album progresses and particularly on repeat listens, “Innocence Gate” begins a conversation that “Sacred Flame” continues — Lopez reminding of Amorphis‘ Tomi Joutsen in his delivery — by building momentum to lead through the bats-notwithstanding instrumental “Tzinacan’s Rising,” the growling horrors of “Death Whistle” and closer “Omen Filled Season,” which in a mirror of what “The Uprising” itself did before it was done, seems to go back toward a more straightforward (again, -ish) push to finish out. It’s this whole-album mentality that Albez Duz so successfully convey this time around and which, if one was to speculate on a direction for future evolution of the band, seems the most likely candidate.

There is, as for everyone all the time everywhere, room to go further, but Wings of Tzinacan gracefully balances diversity of approach with overarching intent and leads its listeners down a grim path without wholly losing itself in indulgences or letting its theatrical elements take away from the impact the material is clearly meant to have. In clarity and in the sureness of the hands guiding it, it is very much a third full-length, but Albez Duz haven’t stopped growing yet and I wouldn’t expect them to now either.

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