Band:	Tenue
Album:	Territorios
Style:	Screamo
Release date:	March 31, 2021
A review by:	RaduP

01. Territorios

Single-track metal albums are not exactly anything new, but single-track hardcore albums might be.

Tenue are a screamo band from Galicia, Spain, and they've previously only released an EP and a full-length. And given that I don't necessarily listen to a lot of hardcore, especially not from such regional scenes, I might have missed Territorios as well, if not for the fact that this album is structured quite differently. As explained in the teaser, this is a single-track album, akin to Crimson and Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness. Though there is no shortage of similarly structured metal albums, you'd be hard pressed to find many hardcore-centered ones. So Tenue ensure that their blend of sounds lets that happen.

Though the core of Tenue sound is an old-school skramz one, the way they go about the sound, infusing it with post-rock, crust punk, blackgaze, and math rock, it acts as a sort of molding material in between what could be sporadic bursts of hardcore that couldn't work inside a longer form otherwise. Their sound as a result is one that is moving quite constantly, and one that still retains that vitriolic and adrenaline fullness that is characteristic of hardcore, but it's contrasted with more emotional changes of pace and mood. Not to say that their core sound is not emotional, hell, screamo and post-hardcore is all about it, but that is further emphasized by the blend of non-hardcore sounds.

There is obviously a danger that Territorios would feel disjointed, and artificially stitched together and extended. I thought I would be able to tell exactly how they would've had individual songs that would be merged together afterwards, but I don't really get that feeling at any point in the album's 29 minute runtime. The album's biggest challenge, maintaining a flow and a momentum of a single song throughout the album's entire runtime, is something that Tenue surprisingly and triumphantly achieved. There's a lot to praise to be given for how the whole thing was written to flow together, but also in how fierce the performance is, especially the vocal one, in order to have the momentum and emotional impact be sustained all throughout.

So even if the single-track approach is the gimmick that made me check out Territorios in the first place, it is the execution of said gimmick that cemented it in my mind.