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Eternal Drak started way back in 1997 in Colombia and only got around to releasing an EP around 2002 before initially disbanding when everyone except bassist Demonslaught quit. Demonslaught went on to form a spiritual continuation with Guerra Total where he plays to this day, but there was apparently some collaboration with Eternal Drak for a split and even a full length from the band in 2018, so I'm a little fuzzy on the full history behind these projects. All I'm certain about is that the previous members who initially disbanded moved up to Canada, came back under the name Eternal Drak in 2020 without him, and have been releasing albums since, this one being the latest from last year.

I share all this in part because it's an interesting and convoluted history that's worth having written down somewhere, but mostly because it's honestly much more interesting than this particular album. The band works somewhere between second-wave sounding black metal and that dirty, thrashy sound akin to bands like Midnight and Bewitcher, with the differences between these two aspects being more pronounced than usual for this kind of thing. Despite that, it's not really doing anything to bring the two together in a particularly compelling way, both not dirty enough to hack the modern black/thrash side and a bit too loose to really sell the straight old-school black metal. The most damning thing I can say is that the best song on here, "Oda a la Luna," is a rerecording of an older track that not only sounds much more akin to what you'd expect from South American black/thrash, but also sounds far more energetic, feral, and compelling than anything else on this album. As is, this comes off as a work from old hands trying to put together old influences with new ideas to stay relevant and interesting, but sadly, while this is entertaining enough while it's on, I think time might have simply passed them by.