Cuzo on Love and Death
If we happened to live in a dimension in which there was one phrase to cover the entirety of what Barcelona instrumentalists Cuzo are doing on their Alone Records debut, Amor y Muerte en la Tercera Fase, that phrase might be something like “vague rock.” The experimental trio comprised of bassist Iv?n Rom?n, drummer Pep Cervante (both of doomers Warchetype) and guitarist/noisemaker Jaime L. Pantale?n run through seven mostly-interconnected tracks of instru-prog, like what Stinking Lizaveta might try if they decided they weren’t a jazz band or a more organic, less keyboard-driven Zombi.
The personality of the album varies almost entirely on each song, with opener “Medium” being mostly an ambient/noisy intro with a high-pitched frequency throughout most of it that cuts into the eardrum in a way that makes you think you’re in for something way less pleasant from Amor y Muerte en la Tercera Fase than you actually are. Almost immediately, “Escalera Roja” establishes Cuzo as a semi-technical band capable of switching and bending moods to their will, but still focused more on expression than structure. Riffs repeat and come and go but Cuzo don’t sound rigid in their execution at all, which is a big part of why the album has such a consistent flow despite the array of approaches within.
By the time you get toward the middle, with the repurposing of the classic Iron Maiden riff from “Run to the Hills” on “El Miedo es lo Que Mata,” Cuzo either have you or they don’t. Amor y Muerte en la Tercera Fase makes for bad background music and passive listening, but anyone willing to engage the album and really delve into it — at least anyone who happens to see this review — should find more than enough to whet their appetite for the unique and near-weird. They bring in some Red Sparowes-style atmospheric play on “Huertas Solares,” and though they come close to crossing the line between listenable and self-indulgent, they manage the balance expertly and never stray from their intended path.
It would come as no surprise if the next Cuzo album had very little in common with Amor y Muerte en la Tercera Fase, as they seem to be the kind of band who will go with a whim and whatever creative spark the moment presents, but don’t take that to mean their ideas aren’t fleshed out on this debut or are somehow underdeveloped. As a unit, the trio manages to transcend the intellectual and the emotional in their music and offer the culminating “Tras la Puerta” as more than just a mishmash of far-off guitar effects and presents it as a summation of the ideas that come before. It’s not as pretentious as it might seem. Rather, Cuzo take what might be awkward and gangly in less capable hands and make it work. If there’s a better accomplishment for a band on their first record, I don’t know what it is.
Alone Records/The Stone Circle
Tags: Alone Records, Cuzo, Instrumetal, Spain
