A Time to Love, a Time to Die by Amor Muere

From the scorched earth of irregular, jagged beats and deep, dark tones springs to life a dusky forest of lush yet unrelentingly unsettling orchestral sounds. Mexican experimental chamber group Amor Muere disappeared into a studio deep in the lush eastern countryside and later emerged with their new record A Time to Love, a Time to Die. Amor Muere constructs deeply tense atmospheres, using plucked strings, wailing solos, and whispering vocals to draw us deeper into an unsettling trance. When the confusing tension breaks, a deep depression settles in, transmitting the band’s fundamental pessimism through some heartbreaking string lead lines that cry on the shoulders of unrelenting background noise. While the album seemingly moves towards a resolution in its first half, the final track shatters this expectation by plucking away each cohesive element of the sound one by one, leaving behind nothing but the disturbing spirit that motivates the band to create in the first place. A strange, cathartic, and surprisingly relatable testament to the end of something great, A Time to Love, a Time to Die shares in our torrent of tears as we suffer through our reality of failed closure and disappointing conclusions. -Michael