by Sebastián Franco

With its pessimism, aggressiveness and thunderous songwriting, Traumatismo Nacional is definitely Sunset Images' best album so far, and the bleakest of their young discography.

Impregnated with a clear and raw dose of harsh reality, Traumatismo Nacional (Little Cloud, 2021) is the second full-length album by Sunset Images, a project where mastermind Samuel Osorio, has imposed a very clear sonic vision that overflows with every delivery. Recorded live, the album is a clear reflection of the band’s power, and of a dark and discouraging stance on modern times.

Although elements of their sound can easily be labeled, trying to pigeonhold them is futile taking the into account the album’s intensity: Osorio gallantly demonstrates aggressive and thunderous compositions, which rumble like avalanches of sound right from the first cut, “Monumento”.

The album progresses in a coherent way, where the voices become lethargic and find a niche where to rest, adorned by reverberations resonating in the distance and above the drums, as evidenced by “メ ル ド, an almost contemplative track, which enlists the listener in a hazy tornado of fuzz. All the meanwhile, tracks like “Voces Oscurecidas” reinforce that discursive cloud that translates into walls of noise and fury, which seems to go at 100Km / h, accelerating more and more in an endless pattern that seems to spin continuously; undulating drums meet dirty guitars that evoke the rottenness of the most deteriorated cities.

"Caída" is the album’s final thrust. A great resonance that advances towards an end without any qualms. It plays out like the sonorous continuation of a journey that follows the trauma of a nation afflicted in deep pessimism. The instrumentation unfurls in an eternal exercise where it seems to find light among so many shadows. Walls of noise that rise up and fall down, in a collapse that triggers both introspection and calm. 

Traumatismo Nacional is definitely the best Sunset Images album so far, and the bleakest of their young discography. An album that under a coherent discourse of the national reality, draws a thunderous picture full of textures, where impotence and refuge find space to coexist; it creates amalgams that are difficult to digest and force the listener to go beyond their own limits, in a very discouraging journey, where the shadows are known and the sound explosions become close to a reality that intersects with the life of any given person from any given modern city.