Majestic Downfall | The Blood Dance
by Justin Gaines
Staff Writer
For those of us who experienced Mexican doom/death metal band Majestic Downfall’s intense 2009 debut Temple of Guilt (and sadly, there aren’t many who did), their follow-up, titled The Blood Dance, is a highly anticipated album. Majestic Downfall is essentially a one-man band, with Jacobo Cordova (ex-Antiqua, Project Firestart) handling just about every aspect of this album.
The Blood Dance is an absolute monster of an album that stretches the structures of the doom metal genre about as far as they’ll go. You get the sense that Cordovo could make Majestic Downfall a very convincing death, black or even thrash metal act if he were so inclined, but instead he’s taken the most effective elements of those styles and incorporated them into Majestic Downfall’s utterly furious brand of doom metal. Where Temple of Guilt seemed a bit more conventional, following the path of early Katatonia, Novembers Doom, Morgion and Evoken, The Blood Dance feels like a barely contained beast throwing itself against the walls of its cage. Part of that – a huge part, actually – comes from Cordovo’s tortured vocal style, but there’s just an incredible aggressive energy throughout the album that’s as urgent on slower, more traditional doom songs like “Majestic Embrace,” album closer “On Silent Wings” and the 11-minute “From Black to Dead” as it is on more brutal numbers like “Cronos” and opening behemoth “The Blood Dance.”
Temple of Guilt was an impressive album, but with The Blood Dance, Majestic Downfall has taken a huge step forward. This is a mandatory album for all doom/death fans, and one that should put just about every other band in that scene on notice. It’s about time we get a doom/death metal band that instead of trying to go gothic or post-metal or sound like Radiohead, opts for a sound that’s darker, angrier, more somber and above all more metal.
Genre: Doom/Death Metal
Band:
Jacobo Cordova (v) (g) (b) (k)
Alfonso Sanchez (d)
Track Listing:
1. The Blood Dance
2. From Black to Dead
3. Majestic Embrace
4. Dimension Plague
5. Army of Salvation
6. An Untraveled Road
7. Cronos
8. On Silent Wings
Label: My Kingdom
Website: www.myspace.com/majesticdownfall
Hardrock Haven rating: 8/10