God Made Me Like Câimbra’s New Album

If you listen to Câimbra’s 5 track EP “E Tudo Uma Mentira”, you are probably not going to be that into it. It’s not one of those records you throw on and immediately love or at least, I didn’t. The Brazilian Melvins kinda sorta type thing. Ho-Hum. I was all set to write a review where I ripped the band to shreds just because I am in a foul mood and taking out a bad day on strangers is every Americans constitutionally guaranteed right. However, lately I’ve been trying to get back into God’s good graces. After all, 36 years of plaguing my friends and neighbors with mean-spirited monologues, ill-intentioned complaints and foul language isn’t worthy of a stint in Hell, but if the Catholics are right I have earned the subtle charms of Purgatory for a good portion of my foreseeable afterlife.

In honor of the Lord, I decided to give this band another chance. It’s what Jesus would have done if he was a balding, paunchy middle-aged man who happened to have selected reviewing sludge metal albums as his hobby. I can’t say Jesus would have liked these guys, but the heaviest thing he had ever heard in his life was probably an atonal hymn done by some of his cave dwelling pals after a long night of drinking “water”. I’ve listened to stuff tuned down past the threshold with which the human eardrum can perceive sound, so I am in a much better position than Jesus to put this album in a proper context.

Here’s the part where God must have gotten involved. About the third or fourth time I listened to this record, I got it. Totally. You’ve gotta look at this band like the howls of some sort of snarling animal that’s about to be euthanized. At first, it sounds horrific to the ears, then, it fills you with dread. At some point, it blends into the world you’re in and makes you feel the resigned, savage clarity that a mortician feels about the dead. Its shock is gone. It has become environment. You start to see the edges of it, appreciate its contours. All of a sudden, the whole rotting edifice comes to life and you are connected to a feedback laced death spiral of torment and fury. Or at least I was, for a few moments anyway.