Location: Manila
Country: Philippines
Genre: Sludge, doom metal
Full length: The Malpractice Observance
Format: CD, digital
Label: Mindplight Recordings
Release date: May 20, 2024
While this Filipino band has increased its passion for heavy, harrowing music since the release of "Kontrasismo" in 2020, they are taking liberties with "The Malpractice Observance" setting it apart from their past material.
The first difference I noticed in the songwriting was the addition of hardcore and groove, reflecting the inherent grime and grit of their surroundings with notable variation. Gapang show how much they’re widening their musicianship with funk, drone, experimental industrial, jazz fusion. atmospheric and acoustic rock and some black metal. All this works well together while expanding on their similarities to Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd.
Combining these genres seems to clarify their impressions of poverty, political strife, and general anger and frustration resulting from these factors. As a result of their releases being readily available on social media, they still have a voice to express it. Not whitewashing their distate, they prefer to lay it bare, loading it with enough feeling for people in other parts of the world to relate to.
In their lyrical content, they continue to challenge their situation. The first verse of "Ad Hominem", "Unwavered blindness keeps straightening the crooked lines/belief is poison/if you believe the lying kind/Damage the image of the righteous few/we stand in protest against these mindless fools" calls you to think about the wool talk shows and one-sided news programs pull over our eyes.
The primal distortion of the guitars and bass, along with the driving percussion, seems to indicate that the band is making more effort to take control of their lives, to restrict a system determined to ignore them and keep them in line. As a vehicle for their ideas, most of the songs sound as if they were written to convey resolve more effectively, alternating between crude rhythms, tribal embellishments, open chords likened to hardcore, and even catchy guitar riffs and verse patterns.
During the album launch show at Mang Rudy's Tuna Grill in Makati City, Gapang successfully recreated on stage what they recorded at Mindplight Recordings. As a traditional power trio, the band is consistently raw and tight, emphasizing their doom, hardcore, and experimental elements. Even if you’re not a fan of doom metal you could appreciate their interaction onstage.
As their second full length, "The Malpractice Observance" manifests Gapang's emergence into something completely new and seminal, as Brazilian metal had in the 90's. -Dave Wolff
Lineup:
Joy Legason: Bass/vocals
Jason Jumawan: Guitars, vocals
Carlo Garcia: Drums
Track list:
1. Ad Hominem
2. All
3. Muster
4. In Celebration Of Ignorance
5. Bargas
6. Matapos Ang Dilim
7. We Walk Incandescent
8. Permanence
9. Sisa
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