R4vel - Impermanente

Active since 2015, the quartet R4vel didn't take long to release their first album. Entitled Catarse, their debut EP came out in 2016, but it's only now, on the first mornings of 2024, that the group is releasing their debut album. Named Impermanente, it is the successor to Meu Mantra, the band's second extended play.

From the ground, the vapor that evaporates through the contact of its surface with the bulging raindrops exudes a melancholic and, consequently, gloomy aroma. While Kai Rodrigo's guitar, with its high-pitched, howling riff, wails and cries almost as if hidden between the velvet of the sheet, a voice appears in the distance like an initially omnipresent echo. It's Eduardo Costa, with a sweetly subtle timbre, increasing the scope of the sound with an icy delicacy until the moment when the song flows into an instrumental that is explosive in its visceral and melodramatic sentimentality. With simple pressure delivered by Jessy Alberola's drums, which move between acoustic and electronic powers, the song exhorts an overwhelming suffering that captures the listener like a sudden pain. Of emocore essence with flirtations of stoner and hardcore, Sete Chaves is a song that, despite its stabbing core, is a song that speaks of courage as a defining and unquestionable element to get through life's adversities. Even so, the song is also about how fear causes individuals to lose their sense of empowerment and end up plunging into insecurities and weaknesses with such a seductive face that returning to the surface is a long and arduous road.

The delicate touch is felt sliding across the sleeping breast of the face. When you open your eyes, blurred outlines of astonishing beauty soothe your heart into awareness. As the vision becomes clearer, the guitar riff becomes more mature in its sweetness, while a sonar imitating an electronic beat increases in intensity. When the instrumental breaks into an explosive unison of intense sentimentality, along with the lyrical pronunciation offered by Costa, Névoa communicates an undeniable aesthetic influence from the sound of NX Zero. Then that gentle hand that woke him up from a deep sleep offers him a warm embrace full of compassion. A protective embrace of affection and love in the face of the internal storms of an individual immersed in an uncontrollable pain that consumes every remnant of sanity through the abysmal absence of hope and motivation.   

The first light of the day is still in a vision full of gamut that presents itself as a metaphor for birth. And like childbirth, the flowers, at the contact of this warm morning heat, begin to open their petals and parade different, lovely aromas that bewitch those who pass by with their generous dose of softness and freshness. At the same time, the remaining drops of serene water evaporate in such a subtle cadence that every surface of the garden remains in a vivid glow from the fresh contact with the evening water. This scenery is only glimpsed with the help of the soft and aromatic introduction, whose first sonars inform a palpable delicacy until the melody flows into a rhythmic structure in 4x4, giving the song a more radio-friendly design. As the first ballad on Impermanente, Flores has the most striking rhythmic-melodic structure of its sound in the pre-chorus. Encouraging overcoming, the song has the task of motivating the listener to have faith, but faith not in the religious sense, but in the sense of hope and wisdom. Seeing in the new dawn the opportunity for a fresh start and new actions is a balm that life gives to make us put into practice the lessons we learned yesterday.

The guitar riff sounds as if a conforming consciousness has taken over the lyrical character. Together with the syncopated beat of the cowbell, it begins to define the rhythmic movement of the song. Between overlapping vocals and a precise beat, remnants of a false country accent, Então É isso, as communicated by the guitar in the melodic awakening, brings a character in a process of conflict between conformation and denial of the assumption of reality, of the perception of a state of no return. It's about dealing with loss, the loss of a love. It's the painful acceptance of the end of a relationship that won't see the birth of a new day.

It's like walking in the dark. It's like feeling wet feet on the grass at dusk. Looking out of the window at the distant, untouchable horizon of a wintry evening. As the memories are re-experienced in front of eyes focused on an unreal and anachronistic image, tears gently run down a face that is soft but already sore from the suffering encouraged by nostalgia. Fora Do Lugar surprises the listener because it is the first song on Impermanente to highlight Fábio Chexx's bass, which is highlighted by a full-bodied but still delicate groove on the melodic surface. Like the previous track, Fora Do Lugar is a work that deals with sadness over the end of a relationship. It speaks of the heartache encouraged by falsely pleasant memories. However, unlike So That's It, the character in this song is only in attempts to overcome this suffering, but is always frustrated because he is less strong than the pain. The interesting thing, finally, is to see that, in the end, Fora do Lugar also shows the acquisition of self-confidence gained here when the protagonist was able to relive his own essence.

Between joyful and swinging guitar overlays, the song offers a surprisingly cheerful and inviting landscape in its calmly solar energy. Once again giving vent to the bass, which provides a precise and rational rhythmic base due to its flirtation with stoner rock, R4vel now offer a slight blend of their emocore with soft rock. Radar is, like Então É Isso and Fora Do Lugar, a composition about the search to overcome and come to terms with the break-up of a relationship. On the other hand, however, the track portrays the protagonist's relationship with society's judgment of his choices and the way he leads his life, generating mixed feelings of frustration, incapacity and desolation. Relying on his achievements and plans for new acquisitions is where balance and emotional strength can be found. So it's not surprising that the character clings to this in order to be able to ignore the suffering coming from other people's opinions.

Right from the start, the melody is a contagious incitement to hope. Soft and melodic in its pop punk structure, Novo Ideal's almost hidden bass is the sound element that plays a leading role in its linear groove, a body that provides a solid base, but also a slight hint of malemolence. With overlapping vocals mixed between raspy tones and a timidly guttural base, Novo Ideal is not a ballad like Flores, but just like it, the track is certainly a strong single from Impermanente. And the strong quality here is also justified by the fact that this song has a storyline that mixes the social with the sentimental and is not anchored in a context of atrocious heartache. In Novo Ideal, therefore, R4vel discusses the need to acquire a sense of belonging in order to feel included in society or in a group of people. It is here that the protagonist ends up dueling between the realization that being who he is is the best way to overcome and the notion that to hide in the crowd is to be denying his weaknesses and, therefore, his growth. Pain can be an unnecessary stimulus because it causes suffering, but it is the path of awareness for achieving perseverance, discipline and, above all, self-confidence.

It has a serene and pleasantly infectious beginning. With an initially cheerful indie rock structure, the song gives Impermanente a break from the lascivious-sentimental explosions offered in the previous songs. Reintroducing a curious aesthetic familiarity with NX Zero and presenting Costa with a more open timbre in his almost guttural velvet, Leal also features R4vel experimenting with electronic beats that mix the synergy of modern pop with trap. As the perfect antithesis to songs such as Então É Isso, Fora Do Lugar and Radar, Leal provides the first truly happy storyline in her romance and passion. After all, it's a love letter pledging lifelong loyalty between the two characters. It is the 'happily ever after' that dispels all the fears, pains and insecurities of this long-suffering character that permeates the plots of Impermanente.

Despite its serene and slightly sweet beginning, the song soon leads the listener into pop punk with a clear Fall Out Boy influence. Contagious in its melodic precision, Planar's whispering and almost omnipresent vocal verse is the element that remains in the listener's subconscious and is responsible for making them hum it even after the song has finished. Planar, like Leal, brings the album's character into a friendly moment. After all, while in the previous song he was finally able to enjoy love that had been reciprocated, here he is emotionally balanced with the maximum self-confidence that gives him the courage and perseverance to go on, overcome with pain and with a stronger heart, towards what motivates him and provides feelings of positivity, satisfaction and fulfillment.

It provides extrasensory journeys, yes, but that's not its main merit. With Impermanente, R4vel dissects a wounded heart, but also searches for the paths of self-confidence, predestination and belonging. Despite featuring an apparently insecure character, the lyricism on the album represents a common yearning in modern society: to be accepted and, above all, loved.

It's not for nothing that, over the course of nine tracks, the album's protagonist embarks on a saga in search of belonging, acceptance, courage and maturity associated with overcoming. It is on this path that life's obstacles test the sanity and emotional balance of the travelers. It tests their wisdom, their sense of certainty and, above all, puts their self-knowledge to the test.

Although melodramatic in its piercing viscerality, Impermanent features a character who suffers from rejection, suffers from the absence of emotional reciprocity. For this reason, he longs to overcome this pain so that he can see tomorrow as an opportunity to start again.

With the help of Nick Grivellas' mixing, R4vel made Impermanente an experimentation of aesthetics which, when fused together, amplified the sense of numbing suffering experienced by the lyrical protagonist. Thus, emocore meets pop punk, stoner rock, soft rock, pop, trap and indie rock. 

However, it should be noted that the equalization of the sound as a whole was not uniform. After all, the bass sound could only be heard clearly in the Fora Do Lugar-Radar-Novo Ideal trio. Before and after that, the instrument's contribution ends up being overshadowed by the punch of the guitar and drums.

Rounding off the technical scope is the cover artwork. Signed by Caio Gomes, it is governed by a gradient of icy tones that goes from blue to a dull green in the center of the image. Embracing a whirlwind of disconnected objects, as well as a person and a cat in hypnotic poses, the work represents all the emotional confusion that the heart can experience. They are insecurities, fears, desires and the secret truth of the absence of self-knowledge as proof of the non-organization of feelings.

Released on 01/19/2024 in an independent way, Impermanente is an album that is numbingly melodramatic. It is here that R4vel unravels human weakness through the lens of love, but where they also represent the common desire to understand, through self-knowledge, that authenticity is the beginning of acquiring the self-confidence and courage needed to overcome any and all of life's adversities.