Critic's evaluation
Made possible through crowdfunding, Between Heaven, Hell And Bones has finally seen the light of day. Recorded in Recife (PE) at Marco Melo's homestudio, The EP marks the first studio release from Recife singer Renan H.O Soares in his solo career.
An enigmatic sonar, but one that carries with it a somber notion, is clearly heard by the listener as a kind of warning. Evolving from a squeak to an almost shrill high-pitched, it gives way to a soft, but dirty lead coming from Marcelo Dias' drums. Keeping the dirty bias, the melody immerses into a low and harsh environment that borders on a gothic, The Cure style, whose body is built by Marco Melo's booming bass riffs. Sometimes strident, the instrument follows almost as if in unison with the deep and tight vocal of Renan H.O Soares, who, in a laminating and hypnotic way, makes Unhallowed Be Thy Name a reflection of certain biblical sayings in order to think about blindness in faith, the human limitation of society, and the very figure of God from the point of view of naivety and puerile immaturity. With bursts of a curious transcendentality, Unhallowed Be Thy Name still manages to mix nu metal notes in its recipe in order to make its sound aesthetic even more somber.
The guitar comes solo walking through the muddy and dense soil. Giving way to bursts of a melodic and acid unison that illuminates with warm colors the darkness of the environment, the instrument follows as a rhythmic-melodic guide. Mixing Stone Temple Pilots grunge with heavy metal and alternative rock, My Personal Hell is a song with a curiously captivating aesthetic in its dark, harsh, and sonorous transitions. Being also possible to notice slight Nickelback influences in its construction, the song even has a tendency to a darker hard rock that even flirts shyly with alternative metal. This is how My Personal Hell dialogues about the haunting of a past that prevents the character from conquering the maximum of overcoming. A character who self-flagellates himself whenever his conscience invokes his sense of guilt.
It is like a funeral march. The melody brings a sense of numbness mixed with a sinister melancholy, perceptible factors, but with weight weakened by the muffled sonar. Persisting throughout the entire performance, this factor weakens the weight and density demanded by the re-reading of The House Of Gold And Bones, Stone Sour's single. It's no wonder that the mix performed on the cover sounds like it was recorded in a garage, such is the rawness of its sound. And the drums are the instrument that most evidences this flavor that borders the tasteless. On the other hand, the guitar and the bass manage to recreate the precision, the somberness, and the accuracy of the original version in a way that makes evident its aesthetic kinship with Animal I Have Become, Three Days Grace's single. The curious thing is to see how Soares chose the track to insert in his debut EP, after all, it has a lyricism that borders on the dramatic, but simply narrates an individual's search for his own autonomy while dueling with a fickle and intensely instinctive unconscious.
It's a short, fast and thick EP. Still, Between Heaven, Hell And Bones manages to reproduce Renan H.O Soares' eagerness to make music. After all, the material, with its two authorial tracks, shows the grim, dramatic, intense, dense, and acid side of an individual who questions faith, deals with the past, and searches for a sense of independence.
This is how Renan H.O Soares introduces himself to the Brazilian music market. Standing out for not following the regional comfort zone of frevo, the musician from Pernambuco presents a work that, mixed and produced by Melo, walks between gothic, nu metal, alternative metal, alternative rock, heavy metal and grunge with a good english pronunciation.
Although the roughness and the potential for intensity are perceived, Melo's task, especially in the mixing, left something to be desired. The material is presented with a muffled and negatively raw sound finish to the point of hiding the density of the drawn out melodies.
Closing the technical scope comes the cover art for Between Heaven, Hell And Bones. Signed by Lucas Rigaud, it features Soares at the center of the image in the middle of a parking lot. Overexposed, the colors are intense to the point of making him look like a caricature, but with the ability to talk about the notions of self-knowledge and the right paths to follow through life, factors indirectly addressed in the material.
Released on 09/15/2023 in an independent way, Between Heaven, Hell And Bones presents an individual with the ability, musicality, and drive to grow in the music business. Between hits and misses, the EP shows, above all, a questioning artist with an acid and gloomy vein that seeks a balance between freedom, faith, and self-knowledge.
