RSS Feed


ZARPA
Bestias Del Poder

Pure Steel (2014)
Rating: 8.5/10

Although the lyrics of this 15-track affair are in Spanish, the latest opus from traditional metal quartet Zarpa is a half-decent one and the sort of album some of today’s young upstarts could learn a lot from.

Zarpa have most certainly been around since the age of the dinosaurs or so it would seem, with Bestias Del Poder being their latest well-stirred cauldron of dark magic to be spilled down from the magic mountain and into our homes.

It’s hard to believe that these guys formed at the tail-end of the 1970s as Wolframio but have survived the 80s, the turgid 90s and even the 00s releasing consistent record after consistent record. Bestias Del Poder is the 11th full-length studio outing from this band whose line-up consists of original vocalist Vicente Feijóo, who has ploughed on tirelessly, and is accompanied by guitarist Rafael Játiva who has been with the band since 1999. The more recent additions to the line-up are bassist Vicente Romero, who joined in 2002, and drummer Bienvenido Godóy (drums), who was taken on in 2004. So, in a sense this is an extremely stable line-up and one which has been thrashing out strong metal every couple of years, with this new effort coming two years after 2012’s Zarpasaurio.

In a sense, Zarpa is still a relatively obscure band for some, but proof that not all the most consistent or long-standing bands of the world are household names. And so, what is the latest chapter of Zarpa telling us? Well, if anything, it tells us that this band has no plans in giving up, so intent are they on battering us with their raging metal that just never lets up.

We begin the latest experience with the thunderous ‘Alma Inmortal’, which is everything you’d want from a metal tune – hard-hitting percussion, a driving guitar rumble, a bestial bass, catchy hooks and those dramatic masculine vocals of Feijóo, who is belting out the anthems as if he was a youngster back in the 80s.

Indeed, there are times in a metalhead’s life when you become sick of the trends and you just want to be suffocated by a pure molten metal experience, and Zarpa is the type of band you can rely on. An organ briefly introduces us to the power metal behemoth that is ‘El Reino De La Verdad’, a thrashing riff comes hurtling in on the cold steel barrage of ‘En La Batalla’, and a bass and drum glam plod brings in the forceful ‘No Me Dejes Caer’ with its hazy solo and convincing plod. Sure, it’s heavy metal-by-numbers, but boy does it succeed in getting that head to bang.

Forget the pretenders and just revel in the leather-clad prowess of ‘Dama De La Osuridad’ with its militant dramatics and ascending sole, and wade into the rusty waters of the hammering thrash Armageddon of the title track. This is metal how metal should be, not once plagued by contemporary design but instead fuelled by blood, sweat and creaking leather and iron. In fact, only a label called Pure Steel could put out such a fiery lump of noise where bestial vocals rise above a crescendo of wolfen-guitar howls, crashing drums and a bass forged from the fire of dragon’s breath. Time to throw those horns up kiddies, and all hail the force that is Zarpa.

Neil Arnold

<< Back to Album & EP Reviews



Related Posts via Categories
Share