Invunche

A creature from Chiloé, an address in Amsterdam

Invunche started in 2012 as the work of one person: a Chilean-born multi-instrumentalist who records and performs under the name El Invunche, based in Amsterdam. The name comes from folklore of the Mapuche and the island of Chiloé, where the invunche is a humanoid thing with twisted limbs and its head turned backwards, made by witches out of a stolen child. It is a deliberate signal about what the music is for. Rather than the standard northern-European black metal furniture, the songs work through South American mythology, shamanic practice, and the collision between ancient belief and modern civilisation.

In an interview published by Swallowed In Black on 11 January 2025, El Invunche described being uprooted from Chile at a young age, and the music as a way back to that ancestry rather than a costume worn over it. The writing method he gave is unglamorous and specific: "It emerges organically during prolonged guitar strumming sessions, where it feels like I'm tapping into a primordial force and letting the melodic spirits that arise take over." He also described a long-standing interest in shamanism, less as imagery than as a fact about human history — that it emerged independently in many parts of the world.

The early material was sung in Spanish and built from very little: repeated primitive riffs, stomping drums, urgent vocals. The project's own biography names Ildjarn and Neu! as reference points, and both are audible in the method — minimal riff cells held far past the point most bands would move on, closer to motorik repetition than to conventional verse-and-chorus construction.

The records: II, the demos, and a compilation of loose ends

The first full-length that established the sound was II, released digitally on 1 October 2018. It was recorded in the summer of 2017, and written, performed, mixed and mastered entirely by El Invunche — twelve Spanish-titled tracks including 'El Vacío', 'Ciudad', 'Ruina' and 'Entre El Mar Y La Montaña', running to roughly twenty-nine minutes. It reached tape through The Tide of the End in 2018 and vinyl through Babylon Doom Cult in 2019. The digital edition includes two extra tracks, 'Side I' and 'Side II', which present tracks one to six and seven to twelve as unbroken pieces; that is a small detail with a large implication, because it says the album was conceived as two continuous sides rather than a sequence of songs.

A demo called Elal followed in 2021 on the Sinister Sun label, the same imprint that still handles the digital side of the catalogue. The compilation Elal y Otros Mitos collects earlier and scattered material, including tracks from a split with the Mi'kmaq black metal project Ifernach — the point at which El Invunche has said the traditional black metal and the psychedelic rock elements first started pulling on each other in the same recording.

Atavismo, and what it changed

Atavismo arrived on 1 November 2024, issued on vinyl and cassette by Nuclear War Now! Productions with the digital release through Sinister Sun. The recording history explains a lot about the record's density: the material was written and performed between 2018 and 2020, then recorded across three Amsterdam studios during 2023 and 2024, with mastering by Arthur Rizk. Sources disagree on whether it is the second or third Invunche full-length, depending on how the earlier tapes are counted, but everyone agrees on the gap — roughly six years after II.

The album is arranged in two halves, Sun and Moon, and the track titles map that structure directly: 'Antü' and 'El Sol' on one side, 'La Luna' and 'Küyen' on the other, with 'Pachamama' a ninety-six-second hinge between registers. The centrepiece is 'Elal' at eleven minutes and thirty-seven seconds, named for the Tehuelche hero, and 'Qhapaq Hucha' takes its title from the Inca sacrificial rite. The closer, 'El Huaso', turns to the Chilean horseman. Against II's near-monochrome attack, Atavismo adds synthesisers, sung clean vocals in a Bathory-adjacent register, and a 1970s drum sound that gives the psychedelic passages room to spread.

Swallowed In Black reviewed it on 26 December 2024 with full marks, calling it a captivating and unique listen and placing it alongside Akitsa, Bone Awl, Volahn and Ildjarn while insisting the project keeps its own identity. That comparison set is telling: raw-punk black metal on one side, the Californian Black Twilight circle's indigenous-Americas strain on the other, which is roughly the seam Invunche now works.

From Gothenburg to Mexico City: the last twelve months

The touring has escalated quickly for a project that began as one person with a four-track. In autumn 2025 Invunche went through Europe on the Extinguishing Civilization Europe Tour alongside the Chilean blackened thrash band Mayhemic, who were out behind their 2024 album Toba on their own first European run. The Gothenburg date landed at The Abyss on 9 October 2025, doors and music between 20:00 and 23:00, tickets at 269 SEK — the scale of room the project was playing a year ago.

Spring 2026 brought a first crossing to the Americas. On 27 March 2026 Invunche played The Brooklyn Monarch in New York on a six-band bill with Conifère, Solar Cross, Keys to the Astral Gates and Mystic Doors, Iron Firmament and Druhtiz. The Texas leg followed, opening at the Black Magic Social Club in Houston on 31 March 2026, and the run continued into Mexico. In between, the project appeared at SWR Barroselas Metalfest in Portugal on 30 April 2026.

The current development is the largest platform the project has had. On 29 July 2026 the Californian powerviolence band Nails announced an October run through Britain, Germany and the Netherlands with Rotten Sound and Invunche in support, tickets going on general sale on 31 July at 11:00 local time. Listings put Invunche on the first seven dates: New Cross Inn in London on 2 October with Harrowed, then SWG3 Warehouse in Glasgow, the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, Rebellion in Manchester, the Asylum in Birmingham, the Scala in London on 7 October with Wolfbrigade added, and the Essigfabrik in Cologne on 8 October. Nails carry on to Nijmegen, Hanover and Berlin to finish on 11 October.

What the set looks like now

The Houston show on 31 March 2026 was reviewed by Harsh Vocals in front of roughly seventy-five people, and gives the clearest recent picture. Invunche plays live as a band rather than a solo turn, including a keyboard player who carries the synthesiser material off the records — the reviewer credited that player with most of the set's cosmic weight. El Invunche fronted the group in a large hooded garment with face paint drawn from Andean and Chilote sources rather than the usual corpsepaint, with the rest of the band similarly made up.

Musically the set ran at a sustained mid-tempo with melodic tremolo leads, and songs were segued so the momentum never dropped. The detail that reviewers keep returning to is the throat singing laid over the synthesiser passages, which broke the set into something other than a straight black metal show. The crowd response in Houston was a long circle pit that the reviewer described as a kind of collective catharsis rather than aggression for its own sake.

On the Nails dates the conditions change. Invunche is third on a four-band bill in rooms several times the size of a social club, which means a compressed opening set rather than the extended, run-together headline format — closer to a concentrated pass through Atavismo than the full arc of it.