Las Cobras – Selva (LP)

Emerging out of the small Uruguayan city of Canelones, in 2017 a new band named Las Cobras released their debut recordings – a 9-track album called ‘Temporal’ – and instantly became a name on the tongues of those tapped into the trans-Atlantic psychedelic underground. A couple of years on and the duo comprised of Leandro Rebellato and Sofía Aguerre are now gearing up to release their highly-anticipated sophomore album ‘Selva’ (translating from Spanish to ‘Jungle’.)

On their debut, Las Cobras magnificently fused together a cocktail of proto-punk and murky shoegaze with traces of afrobeat and Tropicalia, but throughout ‘Selva’ the band can be found taking all of those elements and cranking them up to 11. Nestled in-between the swirling, ethereal noise of the closing tracks (‘Voices’ and ‘The Color Of Dawn’), there are far darker and distorted moments like ‘Down Low’ with it’s mechanical drum-machine and gloomy neo-psych guitars, then the menacing ‘Evil In Your Eyes’ which is driven by a nasty fuzzed-out bassline and the dual vocals of Leandro and Sofia – both gravelly and entrancing, respectively.