ASFALTO

Among the popular Rock bands from Spain, Asfalto from Madrid emerged from the group Tickets in early-70's, but it wasn't until the mid-70's when the group had a stable core on Jose Luis Jimenez (vocals, bass), Julio Castejon (guitar, vocals), Enrique Cajide (drums) and Lele Laina (guitar, vocals).In 1976 the band performed a tribute album to The Beatles, entitled ''Homenaje a Los Beatles'', and the next year they were signed by Zafiro.In 1978 Asfalto made their self-titled debut on Zafiro's sub-label Chapa Discos.

The debut of Asfalto was a full-blown Hard Rock album with slight prog inspirations, featuring dual guitar leads, expressive Spanish vocals and definitely among the more deep bass works to find in the genre.Most of the tracks are short and catchy with some impressive guitar parts and good solos, while even the vocal melodies sound pleasant.A Hard Rock sound with a nice balance between stronger and lighter moments is here and there supported by a proggier style.''Capitan trueno'' is a beautiful Symphonic/Spanish Rock with a beautiful flute melody repeating among its rockier parts.The short ''Todos los dias'', despite performed with a classic rock instrumentation, bursts a light symphonic flavor due to the great guitars and interesting vocals.Even the long ''Quiero irme: la huida'' has its moments with acoustic guitars, impressive electric guitar workouts and more space for instrumental madness.

This is still a typical Hard Rock album from Spain, but the music is sometimes too good to simply pass this one by.Recommended, especially if you like Spanish Prog-related Rock music.

This is the first "real" album from Asfalto, since Homenaje a The Beatles was a thing they got paid for and that wasn't credited to them in the first edition (those were carbon copies of Beatles hits, they got paid to do that).

The band had been rejected by labels for two years. They were working in a opera/concept album when they finally got signed by the new label Chapa (a sub labed by Zafiro). They were the first ever band to have a release for that label that got to sign a lot of Spanish bands over the years. They had some pressure from the label to get a certain grade of success - after all they were the first from that new label - and they gave up the opera/concept project, using only some of those songs for the B side of the album (Quiere Irme: La Huida/Rocinante/La Isla del Amor). The rest was a mix of new written songs and some old songs that they hadn't thought of recording them.

The album was recorded over a few days in November 1977. The guys were very upset by the final results of the sessions. In fact, when they got called for a listening, they thought that was a rough mix, not the mastered album. This got released in March '78 but the disatisfaction was so big that the band broke up because of it, with Jiménez and Laina forming Topo, while Castejón and Cajide recluiting new members to go on with a new name ... until they got convinced by their own crew (that had stayed with them) to go on as Asfalto ... but that's another story.

So the band didn't think at the time that this album was representing them. The new Aslfalto nor Topo weren't playing these songs live ... until a few months later the album started to get really popular, and Asfalto HAD to include songs from it in their live sets. With the years four songs from it (Capitán Trueno, Ser Urbano, Rocinante and Días de Escuela) got to reach a classic status in Spanish rock. And well, the sound is not that good BUT it's NOT bad, the engineer took the "bite" out of their guitars. The band at the time were closer to Man in sound - maybe a bit of Wishbone Ash too - though the big thing about them was having three strong singers, that worked beautiful armonies and did co-leads in some songs - a thing that always goes with me.

These songs mostly don't have prog elements, except Quiero Irme: La Huída and a few touches here and there. The next album would be mostly prog. But that's another story.

Two things: Julio Castejón also handled the keyboards in the recording (he doubled in guitar/keys live then). And the flute that you can hear in Capitán Trueno is from an outsider-non-credited-player (a friend of Jiménez).

A must if you want to know about Spanish rock, but not a prog jewel to be honest.

This is the first album of the Spanish band Asfalto (apart from an album of covers from the beatles they released before), the genre of it I would say its art-rock very oriented to hard rock.

And is it good? Yes, pretty good. In fact, the sonority of the album tends basically to classic rock bands at that time, having everything that you would expect of such work. The songs are more oriented to the common structure: verse- chorus-verse-chorus with most instruments creating the rhythm while the guitar takes the lead.

One cool thing is that therefore the songs have this is structures it usually have some sections where the bands breaks off with a more progressive segment. These "breaks" normally are formed by great instrumental sections and the insertion of a psychedelic feel. A great example of this is the song "Dias de Escuela" whose the major part is an outstanding hard rock song that has a sudden psychedelic moment inserted into it (this song is probably on my top 10 songs in Spanish)

Although most of the time the music is very simple is possible to see that the artists are very competent, the drummer has some parts that are very cool and the bass it's just awesome with strong lines that gives energy to the music. The guitar who dominates most part of the songs is nothing really spectacular but solid.

Certainly the lyrics are the best part of the album, whose are all sung in Spanish and are brilliant, if you don't understand this language, I recommend checking the translations. The general theme of the songs are about liberty and urban life, the band uses of wordplay in creative ways, like in the song "Ser Urbano" (Urban Being) which the title is a play with "Ser Humano" (Human Being). The music "Rocinante" refers to the Spanish literary hero "Dom Quijote", making parallels with the Spanish modern life. This kind of content really makes the album more worth and captivating.

This is album is basically a hard-rock album with some more artistic spice into it, is by any means something that would break your concepts of rock but is certain an album really cool to just put into your car before going to work and enjoy some rock n roll, I recommend it for those who are into classic and hard rock or prog fans that don't care to listen to some more accessible stuff. 3 stars