QUEMADO

Their debut album was a poor heavy metal album, and to tell you the truth, this follow-up is no much better. To put things in perspective, I have nothing against Spanish lyrics (this is the language I share with my Mexican wife at home), but the music has more to deal with heavy metal than with anything else (''Fuerza'').

This album is a truly noisy affair. Since I am the first one to review this album (and their debut one as well, at least providing some comments), it is quite difficult to have a point of comparison for the proghead who has decided to read these lines.

For these ones, I can only say that to have spent a few hours to listen to this VERY long album (over 70 minutes!) and get the ''essence'' out of it was quite a challenge! I wouldn't wish this experience to my worst enemy (actually, I have no real enemy in life).

IMHHO, this band has so far only released two lousy albums. Up to now, ''Pez'' couldn't convey the faintest prog feeling with their music. Maybe that these early recordings were not the most representative ones. But that's a another story.

One song I quite like though here: the languishing ''Siete'' (seven). A fine groove to start, which is of course combined with some harder ''sounds'' later on, but globally this number is pretty much enjoyable. The one and only highlight as far as I'm concerned (although the psychedelic ''Pedazo...'' is not too bad.

The journey throughout this album is a rather though experience. Once in a while, parts of a song can be categorized as bearable like ''Todo Es Fuego''. Is this a hint if I tell you that that the short (ninety seconds) '' El Agua es Electrico'' is my favourite of the whole? The doomed metal intro of ''Seco'' shares a lot with Sabbath, but when the poor vocals show up, the magic is all gone.

This is not a good album, but it does hold some better songs than their debut album. Two stars is my absolute maximum for this release.

As far as I'm concerned, the work from this band so far would better fit in the ''prog metal'' category. But even as such it wouldn't have scored higher than two stars in my papers. I still wonder why I write so much about such an album???

Somewhere down the line, Pez became a very good progressive rock combo. That is well after they released this album though. An album filled to the brim with neo hard rock with a lot of references to Rush, Primus and King's X. That is, a bit stripped down version of Primus. The emphasis is still on punk and new wave. But a lot better song structures and some very good use of a half acoustic guitars has done wonders for this band. The sound is also very good and the vocals are good too. I have no problems at all with the Spanish vocals. They are in fact one of the best things about this album. It gives this album a large chunk of authenticity. A good thing in my book.

The negative thing is the music in short. Both the style and the lack of any good songs. But this is still a decent album and it is also a free download together with their other albums. Downloads I recommend.

2 stars