(By Damon Gravitoyd, Guest Contributor/Writer, RiffRelevant.com)
With their most recent offering ‘The Depths Below‘, Cortez takes it further down to delve into a
dark pool of possibilities. Shine your eyes across a review of the new album and hear an audio
stream of their first single, “Walk Through Fire”.
Cortez have been around the block (or ten). Since 2006, this Boston brigade of five has been
no stranger to writing songs born of heavy. With Matt Harrington on lead vocals, the dual
guitar work of Alasdair Swan and Scott O’Dowd, bass and vocals from Jay Furlo, and new
drummer Alexei Rodriguez, Cortez has come screaming back with a vengeance.
Their aggressive release “The Depths Below”, via Salt of the Earth Records, shows Matt’s vocals
are strong and lend his capable voice to the razor-sharp riffs and runs that claw forth out of
the guitars of Alasdair and Scott.
Jay Furlo’s relentless bass lines are hammering and focused. His low-end rumblings form the
backdrop in which Swan and O’Dowd release their melodious hooks. All the while, the utter
lambasting of the skins serves to punctuate the story, as it unfolds song by song and enforces
the tales of depth and understanding.
Cover artwork by David Paul Seymour
This album’s subtleties insinuate through note and word, at times with sword to throat. Either
way, ‘The Depths Below‘ evokes powerful imagery.
When Salt of the Earth Records signed Cortez last year, they signed a band that had been
working together as a unit for four years. Rodriguez signed on as the new drummer earlier this
year in 2017 (replacing Jeremy Hemond, who performed all drum tracks recorded on ‘The
Depths Below‘). Guitarist Alasdair Swan had already been onboard for four years and frontman
Matt Harrington for eight.
Scott O’Dowd and Jay Furlo, guitar and bass respectively, represent a full decade of the
band’s history. New drummer Alexei Rodriguez is no rookie, as his résumé can attest with his decades of experience refined with the likes of Catharsis, Prong, 3 Inches of Blood, and Walls
of Jericho, to name a few.
This band has the chops to pull off a very good album… and they do just that right here with
“The Depths Below”.
http://www.riffrelevant.com/2017/06/21/cortez-the-depths-below-album-review/
