GUSANO MECANICO

A while ago I managed to listen to a video posted in our respectable forum, and although the sound quality was poor something grabbed me, what I remember hearing between the lines is great guitar, fast rhythm and some nice percussion. Placing this one on my turntable, at first I thought this is nice and energetic, but repeated listenings revealed that there isn't much behind this album.

This trio from Bolivia were much more influenced by the playing of artists like Hendrix, Blackmore and Budgie rather than the progressive rock presented by Yes or ELP, they just wanna rock. The music is leaning heavily on the wild guitar played by Jose Eugenio leaving drummer Alvaro Cordova no choice but to follow him on their quest to fast-madness city. The music is mainly going on one direction and is not trying to branch out to much, they are certainly not trying to be the world's biggest rock band. The compositions here were written as guide lines to the band to jam on, the riffs are fast and rocky and always leading to some crazy jamming with electric guitar soloing. One refreshing addition are the percussions accompanying the music and giving it a southern american tribal vibe, really cool although in some cases are useless and does not add anything, they should have censored it a little bit to a greater effect, but I don't mind, it is better than not having it at all.

What we have here in this short LP are six compositions (if you can call them like this), all are played with enormous amount of energy, maybe too much energy, there is no logical line that the band is following or developing, it's as if they are not listening to each other. The drummer is clearly on a few ecstasy pills, it doesn't matter what the other two are playing he's always improvising like a mad man, he can't just lay back and produce a good beat or throw a few imaginative ideas, it's really tedious at some point. Guitars has some good riffing and a few occasional good solo moments, his playing is furious and fiery but lacks any feel, he's one of those fast guitar player dudes that doesn't really know how to generate anything good, but gets something nice by accident. But actually I've heard far worse albums than this, some moments does work out nicely and I gotta give them some credit for their enthusiastic playing. "Pachacuttec" is the album's opener and although it starts very promising, the band just didn't know how to go from one idea to the next so they just faded away in the middle of the song and turned right away with something different, stating that they weren't that creative or experienced in writing an effective essential prog piece, still as a whole this track actually works fine and the music is ok. "Gusano Mecanico" the album's title song can be considered as the highlight and their most progy track, since it does switch from one part to the other and have an overall progy feel. Since the drums are filling an importanat role here, the band thought it would be wise to include a drum solo track, like we didn't hear enough drums already. I'm glad it didn't lasted more than 3 minutes, as nice as it is. The closing track actually shows some diversity, featuring a jazzy tune and a more relaxed atmosphere, with some nice piano.

The album has "debut" written all over it, since it's supposed to be fun and energetic but it still contains all the mistakes a band can do on their first album, which is fine and acceptable. They should have worked on and polished their compositions more, before recording the album. So if you are a guitar freak or just like high energy music without being so progressive, this is a good find.