"Cultura Tres"
"Cultura Tres"
Now hailed as the national rock/sludge pride of Venezuela, Cultura Tres came from far. With the first EP "Seis" (2007) the band already outgrew the South American continent. But only after releasing debut album "La Cura" in October 2008, the band started to get noticed worldwide. During the preceding year of rigorous composing, Cultura Tres incorporated many influences into their sound, ranging from sludge to doom metal and from death metal to classic rock.
Important magazines in Europe and Japan praised “La Cura” for its dark and original music, and Metal Hammer magazine even selected Cultura Tres as the month's global discovery. The release tour took the band during 18 months across Europe, South America and to the first well-received shows in Japan. In that period the band also released three video clips that gained them a world-wide cult following in the underground doom & sludge scene (for example being featured band on Doom Metal Alliance, Stonerrock.com and HeavyPlanet.com).
In the summer of 2010 the members locked themselves up in the studio to prepare the second album: “El Mal del Bien”. The result is - in the band members’ own words - “an album with a single clear direction”. Cultura Tres delves deeper into the dark atmospheric vein that already showed itself at moments in debut album La Cura. The daring album opener “Propiedad de Dios” sets the mood: it sounds like the soundtrack of a tragic cult movie. The songs that follow evoke the witchery, slavery, oppression and religious madness that influence the South American continent to this day. Being a concept album adds another dimension to the individual songs. A patient listener will be dragged into a hallucinating trip around the insane world the album paints.
Interestingly, the band has chosen to cover what might well be the first doom track in South America: “Holy Graveyard” (1992) by Epitafio. Alejandro Londoño, having been a member of this band in the past, has now fully closed the circle. Cultura Tres is living proof that the genre of doom/sludge was not dead in South America but merely dormant. Now it has woken again, not only speaking Spanish, but more importantly, with its own face.
El Mal del Bien saw its vinyl release in South America on March 19 2011, with a tour that hit Venezuela, Argentina and Chile; and later summer festivals and club shows in Holland, Czech Republic and UK. The underground buzz is growing worldwide as the most important blogs and webzines are unanimously praising the unique direction the band has taken, which also led to the band being requested to deliver a track for the Global Metal CD of Metal Hammer (in the Sept. 2011 issue). With a new European tour coming up in spring 2012, don’t miss this chance to hear the new sound of South American sludge!