Album Review: LaColpa – Mea Maxima Culpa (Toten Schwan Records)

Mea Maxima Culpa is the debut album from Italian doom/black/noise metal band, LaColpa. The album was released on September 16th 2017 via Toten Schwan Records.

Just three tracks long but coming in at around 40 minutes. LaColpa deliver a listening experience that can be best described as ‘unsettling’. While a doom record at heart, Mea Maxima Culpa is not content with being restrained by the genre. For all the deep & booming doominess, there is a blackened metal vein running through everything.

Sometimes it’s subtle, other times it’s cranked up high giving off a more feral & disgusted sound. The first track, Soil takes us through every stage of this. With the darkest doom, the blackest metal & moments of pure chaos. It should sound like a mess but it’s surprisingly inspiring & addictive to listen too. A lot of the joy is brought from the evil whispered vocals that sit quietly behind the rhythm & harder flashes of metal.

Scars does the opposite, choosing to erupt in a flurry of clattering instruments akin to the sound of your worst nightmares. It leaves you with a desperation for silence & just when you think you can take no more it drops in a haunting bass tone that threatens to loosen the bowels.

Fragments (Of A Smiling Face) caps everything off with 15 minutes of earth-shattering doom & a furious level of noise that does everything possible to destroy your senses. The most structured sounding of the three tracks, it has some of the most impressive moments of the album.

There’s a whole host of original ideas & unique sounds throughout Mea Maxima Culpa that makes it required listening for all fans of metal. The wilder moments take some getting used too but once you do you’ll see how the hurricane of noise fits perfectly with the darker, doomier parts.

LaColpa – Mea Maxima Culpa Full Track Listing:

1. Soil
2. Scars
3. Fragments (Of A Smiling Face)

You can pick up the album now over on Bandcamp & find out much more about LaColpa on Facebook.