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MONUMENTAL REX is proud to present CARMA’s highly anticipated second album, Ossadas, on digipack CD format, as well as a special handmade edition.
Death, the dead and the dying…
Hailing from Portugal, CARMA made their bolt-from-the-blue debut in 2015 with the self-titled full-length Carma. A unique mixture of funeral doom, black metal, and dark ambient, Carma found the trio almost effortlessly mesmerizing those who dared to step into the deep expanses of their debut album.
However, that album was but a foretaste of the mastery to come from CARMA. Some seven-plus years later arrives Ossadas, a bolder and more immersive album. Totaling an epic 68 minutes, CARMA’s second full-length is indeed daunting from the outset, but exponentially rewards those brave enough to enter its hallowed corridors. Such a massive structure is not merely bloat or an unchecked whim: Ossadas is a conceptual album inspired by the Conchada Cemetery, located in Coimbra, Portugal. As such, the title of the record’s nine tracks are the most common words that appear on tombs and tombstones throughout the cemetery. The lyrics, written in Portuguese for full effect, explore various cemeterial aspects (architecture, burials, atmosphere) and the related feelings (fatalism, futility, death, loss, mourning, remembrance, longing, among others). Some lyrics even contain certain verses engraved on the cemetery’s tombstones.
But such evocative endeavors would be for naught if Ossadas didn’t have the sonics to provide the emotional landscape. Entirely recorded and produced by CARMA, Ossadas develops the musical ideas set by the self-titled debut work but separates some of the black metal element for a purer (or at least more Spartan) display of funeral doom. Here, the rhythms become more varied, the guitar melodies more multilayered, a much greater prominence of male choirs, and overall a dense sonority full of details. In fact, perhaps Ossadas‘ subtlest-yet-greatest achievement is emitting a suitably MASSIVE sense of space – strangely relaxing, almost monastic – but one tastefully embellished with textural twists that nearly drift into the ether before the listener can grasp their paradoxical immensity. Of course, CARMA can CRUSH with the characteristic heaviness of tried & true funeral doom when they want to, but that’s not necessarily the focus. Just witness the way they weave three instrumental interludes – “Leirão 1,” “Leirão 4,” and “Leirão 7” – into the overall fabric of the album, or the track “Monumento” based on the toccata from “Suite Gothique” originally written by Léon Boëllmann in 1895.
Accompanied by an extensive visual representation of the funerary art from the Conchada Cemetery, meticulously crafted by Infected Minds, CARMA’s Ossadas is a great work of ages ready to be explored.
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