Piah Mater "Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun" LP

The Brazilian progressive death metal duo return from the blazing tropical gloom on their new album, 'Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun'. Six years removed from their latest effort, the band picks up the broad brush of influences that gave their previous two albums a modest cult following and add new colors to the rusty canvas of the genre, aiming towards a landscape that stands as uniquely their own.

'Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun' sees the band venturing deeper into familiar territory while still managing to bend the expectations of how far the death metal tag can be stretched. Elements of jazz fusion are more pronounced on cuts like 'Fallow Garden', with its extended solo section and interplay between guitars and saxophone, courtesy of Norwegian extraordinaire Jørgen Munkeby (Shinning, Ihsahn) and Brazilian folk music is represented on the closing track, Canícula, an eerie portuguese-sung tune that takes its time to build into the climax of the album.

The artwork for the record was drawn by Romanian artist Rada Niță Josan. Singer and guitar player Luiz Felipe Netto comments on the choice: "In a age where AI generated images seem to be taking up more and more space within the metal community, we felt it was important for the art fronting this record to be unmistakably and unapologetically human. Rada's tracing has so much personality to it and it's so easily recognizable as hers that I knew we had to work together the moment I found her."

Thematically, the album weaves its thread through the six songs therein with a lyrical center point that revolves around feelings of inadequacy and strangeness towards one's own homeland and the inevitable ensuing ambition to escape that place. Netto remarks: "Be it due to climate disasters or a plain cultural shift, be it the exodus of a people, the asylum of a family or the lonely journey of a single individual, these migrations patterns were observed and condensed into these lyrics."