A little bit crusty, a little sludgy, a good amount of atmosphere and a well portioned amount of blackened-blastbeaty-and-screamy anguish layered over some top notch melodies. God, I love bands that can’t be easily placed into one specific box or subgenre and Las Llagas is definitely one of those bands. The brand new four piece band is hailing from Uruguay and influenced by a massive range of bands to blend their unique sound, with the more obvious influences being Lagrimas, Gillian Carter, Habak and Eyelet which can be heard bleeding into their songwriting (they also listed Youth Funeral who I was stoked to see alongside everyone from Knocked Loose to Brat and Invictum).

So instead of always telling you what I think the band sounds like we decided to asked their guitarist Gonza:

“Heaviness, dense atmospheres, strain and violence.”

Yup, that definitely checks out.

“I think Las Llagas' music right now is about intense emotions, the old cathartic ritual of screaming and what cannot be expressed in any other way.”

The bands’ other guitarist Nazareno also sees the band as an avenue to release his tensions “Musically I love repetitive mantric music and distortion and when combined they let me unleash my anger and all my emotions, that’s why I love playing live so much, is therapeutic.”

SO HOW DID YOU ALL WRITE THIS EP?

Gonza: Normally I start by playing guitar until I find some combination that interests me, I develop that until I achieve some riff or passage that I can transmit to the whole band and then it’s completed with the collaboration of the rest if we all feel that it makes sense with what we like to play.

Hiram: For the last song on cuánto tiempo nos queda para oler los eucaliptos, Gonza brought the first part and then we started improvising until we arrived on that sludgy part that is basically the whole song, and that song is just different each time. The newer songs we are working on now all share that with that song, were we are finding a part of the song where we can just let loose, and give into whatever we're feeling at that time, I really like the uniqueness that gives to live shows, where even if we played the same songs in the same order twice, you'd experience two different shows.

What’s even more interesting is how their recording process went..

HIRAM: The 4 of us recorded together in a friends studio, the drums were in one room, and the other three of us were in another room but with a glass in between us, so there was visual contact and we tracked the instrumentals live. Juan, our friend that has the studio, plays with me in uoh! and has recorded almost every recording I've been in either playing in the band, or as a producer recording other bands, so it's a very familiar ambience to record in.

What we really centered on was drums, when we picked which takes to use it was mainly listening to drums. Then after that, vocals and extra guitars were recorded in our homes. Vocals were recorded screaming into a wardrobe and then we doubled and tripled guitars with a pod go direct into the pc, and the bass clean line was also re amped through a pod go.

Then I did the mixing (I have a label where I release bands I play in and bands that I record or mix, called El Octavo) and after that we still wanted some more "brutalness" jaja, (jaja means haha in Spanish), and I had just stumbled upon Black Birch's LP and loved the sound and saw it was mastered black birch's drummer / guitarist Ulf Blomberg. I asked him to master the album. After he accepted, I realized that I followed his YouTube channel HoboRec Recording Studios and had seen a bunch of his videos jajaja.

“LYRICALLY I THINK THE EP CAME FROM A DARK PLACE, I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A HOPEFUL PERSON BUT LATELY I’M FACING ALL THE WRONG DOING OF HUMANITY (INCLUDING MY OWN OF COURSE).

SPIRITUALITY AND NIHILSM ARE OPPOSITES BUT THEY’RE ALSO VERY CLOSE TO EACH OTHER. LATELY I LEAN TOWARS THE LATTER BUT I THINK THAT’S GIVING THE ‘HERE AND NOW’ MORE MEANING, LIFE IS SO FRAIL AND MOMENTARY THAT I NEED TO STOP AND SMELL THE EUCALIPTUS WHENEVER I CAN CAUSE TIME IS RUNNING OUT”.

- NAZARENZO @LASLLAGAS

SO WHAT MORE CAN WE EXPECT FROM THE BAND THIS YEAR?

“We've only started playing in July and we've played 5 shows so we'll looking to play a lot more shows this year, we don't have anything closed yet, but we'd like to play some shows in Argentina and Chile this year, and maybe even Brasil? We'll see! 

At the end of last year we recorded two new songs, one came out on a benefit compilation for Palestine on Total Liberation Records, and it's what we're finishing mixing right now (actually I think the compilation is coming out in February so it'll be out already when the album and this article is released) and the other one I guess we'll hold on to in incase we're invited to participate on another compilation or split.”

WELL ANY CLOSING WORDS FOR THE READERS?

Nazarenzo:  Life is here and now, we never know how much time is left to smell the eucaliptus.

Emi: Look at me mom, I'm answering some questions from a foreigner, those hours of drums study and noise were useful haha.

Thank you Emi, that’s probably the funniest closing words I’ve put into an article..

Their EP cuánto tiempo nos queda para oler los eucaliptos was released on March 5th on cassette by Fiadh Productions in the US, El Octavo in Uruguay, 1a0 in Italy, and Slow Down Records in Norway so grab a tape where ya can and follow Las LLagras on their Instagram linked below.

Las Llagas is Gonza on guitar, Naz on guitar and vocals, Hiram on bass and vocals, and Emi on the drums.