Band:	Don Bolo
Album:	Bahamut
Style:	Avantgarde metal
Release date:	January 2022

01. Inclusión
02. Bahamut
03. Artesanales
04. SIKA
05. Solo Tolérala
06. Pide Verga Con Confianza
07. Solo Se Odia Lo Querido
08. Así Es La Vida Abuelita
09. Naro Pacional
10. Nuevas Masculinidades
11. El Huevo
12. Coronavirus - Alpha
13. Coronavirus - Omega

Do you ever ache for more experimental South American music?

I have never listened to Ecuadorian music before, which is a shame, because there's a lot of good music coming from South America and there's only like ten countries out there so I have no excuse for not listening to at least something from each of them. This year marked my first Ecuadorian album, courtesy of a fellow reviewer uncovering some left-field death metal. But even more left field was the discovery of Don Bolo, self-described as "experimental music for people with mental issues". Well that's a pretty broad generalization and something irks me the wrong way about it, but giving Bahamut a listen did reveal that this is very atypical music, so it's only fair that it should appeal to neuro-atypical people.

We have Don Bolo tagged as avant-garde metal, which is debatable. Both the avant-garde and the metal side. You'll notice that a lot of avant-garde music relies heavily on genre fusions, and left-field detours through other genres. There isn't really any metal genre being put inside Bahamut's blend, but the end result as a whole takes the heaviness from all its elements and amps them enough to create something that can be called "avant-garde metal", hence why you have those muscular riffs feeling completely at home in the sound. I did make a case in another review that it's weird to call things "avant-garde" just because they sound like other avant-garde stuff. And you can trace the avant-prog of King Crimson, the jazz grind of Naked City, the experimental rock of Mr. Bungle, the art punk of Talking Heads, the post-hardcore of At The Drive-In and pretty much everything has at least a touch of familiarity.

But it's all packaged in such an effective form. The Latino influence makes itself known in most tracks, with the Latino elements being a pretty significant part of the blend of styles, along with the specifically fiery punk feeling that is pretty fitting. Some genres only have one or two moments of integration, like some reggaetón or surf rock. It's wacky and fun, and you can tell it's probably a bit more explosive and unfocused than it should be, but it's such a blast to listen to. Part of the appeal is lost on non-Spanish speakers, with a lot of track title puns and odd samples (including a Spongebob one). Despite its relative absent-mindedness in focus, it's not the kind of album that ever loses your attention. It's a wild ride, full of grin-inducing grooves, blasting horns, hilarious samples. Saxophones as a means of putting a jazz feeling in your music is already way too much of a gimmick, so it really takes something like Bahamut to really remind you how riveting they can sound.

Sure, it's probably not a metal album, but some of the moments here are so heavy that I really can't see this not sitting in the same musical space as Naked City or Mr. Bungle. Both in sound and attitude.