Travo - Wasteland

Braga, Portugal-based psych-rock four-piece TRAVO return with Wasteland, their heaviest and most metallic album to date and first on their new label home Fuzz Club.

The pressure of wanting to take a step forward with the next album started to creep in and caused some internal friction. This feeling of urgency naturally carried over into the songs and gave them a character they likely wouldn’t have had in a more relaxed writing environment.”

Across its seven tracks, Wasteland explores themes of “techno-anxiety, disconnection, dystopia, love, death, rebirth, and the search for collective spirituality”, note the band. Each song is loosely inspired by a different section of T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Waste Land’, “whose themes and motifs feel especially relevant today.” Musically, the album incorporates dark psychedelic and industrial influences, fusing them with the band’s more familiar elements: loud and corrosive fast-paced songs intertwined with crushing, slow-burning epics.

The vocals range from catchy falsetto melodies to full-on growls and screams. The guitars interplay with each other, producing either beautiful harmonies or uncanny dissonances. The rhythm section is tight, potent, and hypnotic. It is also the band’s most synth-heavy album to date.

Altogether, Wasteland is an aggressive, genre-bending rock record knocking on metal’s door while still managing to breathe through the chaos. It’s an intense headbanging journey between fast, bad-trip-inducing jams and contemplative ambient passages.