The band is formed around guitarist Ramón Ortiz, who has already done some impressive work with his former band Puya. Puya has done two records and the Ozzfest tour of ’99. This time Ortiz has decided to intensify his efforts in metal, and make things a bit more brutal. The Latin metal coming from Ankla (meaning anchor) mixes thrash and death metal with hardcore and metalcore, but when you listen to the songwriting you hear a band from the nu-metal era, how dirty the name of that style might be by now. When I listen to Ankla I think of bands like Dry Kill Logic, Devildriver, Pantera, Downthesun and Machine Head. Nice grooving heavy metal, fuck yeah!

 

Well you probably noticed me using the term Latin metal, because that is what they make, end of story. But where Ill Niño completely fucked up and traded in their best musician for a guy that nearly ruined one of the greatest metal bands ever, this band sound heavier than everything Ill Niño did after their debut. The first couple of tracks contain no clean vocals, and the singing which is introduced later contains more originality than that Ill Niño fucker has ever come up with. Of course there are the comparable Latin guitar, Spanish lyrics and percussion present every now and then, but I think that the way Ankla uses it is different.

 

Overall I think Steep Trails is a very nice debut, and I certainly hear an album that will find its way to my ears many times to come. It just simply rocks, grooves and bashes like a decent metal album should. With a sound of its own. A very marketable product indeed.