Brazilian progressive death dealers Piah Mater merge styles with ease on their second album, The Wandering Daughter. Starting with a bedrock of death metal, they add hints of black metal and filter it through a progressive rock lens, leading to sprawling, thoughtful compositions. Diverse riffs abound on The Wandering Daughter, ranging from bright and bouncy to serpentine and dissonant, jumping from blast beats and death growls to acoustic guitar and clean vocals.
The ability to combine these various parts is Piah Mater’s greatest strength; if the songs felt rushed or half-assed in their construction, the fusion of styles would fall flat. Fortunately, this is not the case and the Brazilian group are able to add their name to the (rapidly growing) list of impressive death metal releases this year.
“Although it’s not a concept album per se, The Wandering Daughter does have a common theme throughout its entirety, a thread that connects its 6 songs into a sensorial unity,” Piah Mater relay to Decibel. “On a musical level, we aimed for that feeling of being taken on a journey, with its many pitfalls and climaxes along the record’s 56 minutes of play. Lyric-wise, that thread would be the relationship between man/woman and nature. I understand that, at first glance, this is not exactly groundbreaking territory for a band to explore in their songs, plenty of artists have delved into this topic before. But I do believe that, when crafting lyrics, perspective is everything and that the way this subject is presented stems from a very genuine and intimate place. I hope that comes across to the listeners as well.”
The Wandering Daughter is out Friday, October 5, on Code666.
