Critic's evaluation
It was born around 2013. The solo career of São Paulo producer Ablan Namur, however, only found the opportunity to release a full-length album years later. Entitled Verdades Malditas, the material is not only the first EP, but also the debut of Namur's solo project.
It's like the first phase of darkness. You can still see the sunlight illuminating the sky in an almost translucent blue, but the depth is such that the purity of the air is no longer captured by the lungs. The oxygen becomes rarefied. Reddish eyes brush the rocks, while their bodies, still human, but already in the process of ovoidization, try to avoid the gaze of the newcomer. In the form of nu metal flirting with avant-garde metal in the same recipe followed by System Of A Down, the melody comes in dirty, rough punches. Its harshness is sensitive from Ablan Namur's raspy tone to the guitar riff. Between pleas, despair and agony, Fantasmas manages to bring an interesting mix of alternative metal and hardcore into its already effervescent melodic recipe, set against a harrowing storyline that features a character trying to break through the barriers of his own evil introspection. More than that. Fantasmas brings the routine of an undead consumed by disbelief, someone in an advanced state of madness whose hallucination has become so tactile that a previously imaginary danger is now real.
Keeping the base dirty and rough, the new atmosphere matures the hiss as an important element in the construction of the aesthetic texture, thus bringing lo-fi into the sum of sound ingredients. With its deliberately stunning vein enveloped by a chaotic and insane lyrical interpretation, Cacoetes E Fantasias is the exorcization of nostalgia. A mourning for a yesterday reflected in the mirror. Simplicity, purity, delicacy and naivety as props for a blindfold that only sees and does good. "Nada mais é como antes", cries the lyrical character in agony, in his clear visceral sadness at the hands of a clock that sadistically and tirelessly keeps ticking.
Melodramatic is an adjective that, despite encompassing two other characteristics, takes away their weight and individuality. Therefore, the atmosphere that builds up is one of dramatic melancholy and overly weepy emocore. Melodic in its painful outbursts, Tô De Mal is a song that brings the antithesis of persistence and overcoming with self-indulgence and an exaggerated sense of satisfaction, a recipe that consumes the essence of the individual and keeps them in a false state of torpor.
Continuing in the same emocore vein, but without the latent drama of Tô De Mal, a melancholic base melody is unleashed. With a mixture of alternative rock and a dark atmosphere that communicates a sound similar to that of Charlie Brown Jr., Lobisomem is unsettling, visceral and poignant in its quest for self-knowledge. Between rocky mountains, ditches of abyssal depth and the jolt to the surface, the character finds himself between consciousness and the manipulation of the pain of a heart absent of belonging. Even so, the pain and tears in Lobisomem are overcome by overcoming and persistence for life and the gratitude of one's own identity in the search for the fullness of happiness.
It's curious how, even with the guitar in dirty distortion and the tempo of the kick drum, the sound manages to spread a sense of nostalgia to the listener. Growing in pressure as early as the third phrase, the song gains stridency from the bass in the sound body and a melodic overlay from the lead guitar. With its mix of emocore and hardcore, Duas Leoas has an aesthetic that is very reminiscent of the golden era of the 2000s, when names like Atopilot Off, Yellowcard, Rise Against and Sugarcult were among the notorious. In the form of a curious teen soundtrack, the song is the story of Ablan Namur's relationship with alcohol. It's where the singer admits that it's this sacrilege that makes him more lively, interesting and, above all, secure. Duas Leoas is the perfect cut between the dual personality of an individual when sane and when numb. The sharp, harsh sigh of the search for self-confidence.
With just a few words spread over just a few tracks, Ablan Namur tears himself apart. He squeezes every corner of his interior in a clear attempt to feel light and on the road to a kind of self-redemption. Not least, Verdades Malditas, is the soundtrack of a disturbing interior that needs to scream to exorcise its foundations of fragility and danger.
As if in a mirror, Namur makes the EP his reverie of his addictions, his existential emptiness, his lack of self-confidence and his relationship with time and his sense of persistence. Even though it's dramatic, stinging, poignant, tearful and painful as a way of expressing his weaknesses and strengths, Verdades Malditas manages to have a striking melody.
Dirty, rough, intense, but melodramatic, the sound was directed by Roberto Kremer. With him, the EP managed to tread the terrain of emocore, hardcore, avant-garde metal, lo-fi and alternative rock with great versatility and consistency. It all transpired in a happily well-balanced final product.
Rounding off the technical body of work is the cover art. Signed by Patrick Ribeiro, it has a morbid feel to it, with features heavily influenced by Salvador Dalí. After all, the central figure looks like a soul in an advanced state of ovoidization. All shapeless, she is in the company of a cigarette, the only narcotic artifice on earth, thus proving the maximum instability of an afflicted and agonized individual in his search to belong and know himself.
Released on 08/30/2023 in an independent way, Verdades Malditas is the most crystalline mirror of an individual torn apart in his emotional fissures. Excavating every point of suffering, the EP shows that Ablan Namur, even in the midst of pain, nostalgia and emptiness, manages to have lapses of sanity to gain strength and persist through life.
