Rebel Extravaganza

Heavy Metal And Other Occasional Musics And Cultures

Gaerea

Album Review: Gaerea – Mirage

GAEREA’s sophomore release, Limbo of ’20, was one of the surprises of that year, both showing a band successfully expanding upon the debut, yet remaining true to themselves – not so much a reinvention as a reworking – and ended up on the Best Of 2020 lists of myself and many others. All-important third album Mirage sees the Portuguese troupe keeping the 8 songs to around average length for the band, yet still under an hour for total playing time. While the extended tracks that bookended Limbo were grand, ‘Memoir’ captivates from the start, shimmering, hazy as a mirage itself, […]

Album Review: Gearea – Limbo

It worried me when I saw that Portugal’s GAEREA had not-one-not-two-but-three (count ‘em!) songs past the 9-minute mark on its sophomore release, Limbo. Now I’m all for exploration, sonic and otherwise, but I’d truly enjoyed the 40-odd minutes of Unsettling Whispers in 2018, and its been my considered opinion that genre-wide, black metal slips most easily into wandering tangents when it should stay right where it is, and stop trying to be so fancy. I’m looking at you, UADA. Hence, when GAEREA pulled not one single punch, getting down to the monolithic, tower of fuckoff that is the beginning of […]