DEN MARTENS

Den Martens, an Argentinian band released their debut towards the end of 2017. It is a good debut/album. The music reminds me of indie music with a gentle touch of various classic progressive rock styles.

Bienvenida is the opening track and is a symphonic instrumental. Short and sweet, does a good job opening the album. (this song just segues into the next song, kind of a prelude to the next song)

Cucu, the second track features the beautiful under enunciated vocals of Den Martens, sublime melody and instrumentation. There is a good amount of music happening in six minutes, all of it good. Some foot shaking guitar chugging and some lovely twists/turns. Great track.

A mind that projects is the third track. It falls in the same vein as the previous track, albeit less good. A solid track with some crunchy guitar

Charge of the flower bottle brigade, like the first track is instrumental and serves as a sort of palate cleanser. I've never thought of songs like this as either good or bad, depends on the albums "meat". Nice garnish, prepares one for Starless Nights.

Starless Nights is the longest track and opens with guitar arpeggios and then vocals mournful vocals come in shortly. Great opening which is tossed up as crunchy guitar enters to provide contrast. The vocals and arpeggios return, this time with synth pad back up. Again, the heavy guitar bit comes refrain comes. Then an ambient section with various sounds happens. This section is alright, thankfully the sounds are all pretty organic and avoid cheesy beep boop territory, unfortunately it's just to long. I believe this part runs about half of the track, so six minutes. I don't think this part should have been cut out entirely, rather trimmed of maybe 2-3 minutes. Anyways after this hiccup a brief guitar solo leads back to the refrain, which is followed by guitar chords as an outro. At the end of the day this is a good song, I like it but wish they had used the build up better, I don't hate that kind of ambient stuff, it's just not where the song should have headed.

Potentially my favourite track, Softness Shape Of is mostly instrumental, dominated by pads and a synth lead playing a good melody. In time acoustic guitar chords follow and haunting vocals. So sad, so good. This track pretty much is just the opener for Your Melancholic Eyes.

Your Melancholic Eyes also exhibits beautiful vocals, some of which are in Spanish(?) as opposed to English like most of the album. This track reminds me of Cucu, yet retains its own flavour by everything being memorable. Probably my second favourite track.

Overall Den Martens is a great album, 4/5 because of a meandering bridge on Starless Nights and unnecessary A Mind That Projects. Good album, also the first two tracks are one song, same with the last two. There are only five songs on this album.