EL DIA DE LA TORMENTA

After their very good 1974 debut which earned them the nick of "the Spanish Deep Purple", from late 1975 the band members had to leave for the then compulsory military service, losing some three years in the process. By the time they could all come together again, 1978, the music scene had changed radically and that heavy prog with Hammond, Blackmore-esque guitar and furious drumming was out of fashion.

With a new bassist Pedro Garcia replacing Jose Torres they attempted to adapt to the new times but there was a clear hesitation regarding the musical direction to take and the result was rather disappointing.

The Hammond is replaced by synths, the early 70's Deep Purple sound is totally gone and it's quite impossible to recognize that this is the same band that recorded that 1974 debut album. The lyrics are now in Spanish, and rather poor by the way.

The style is a rather inconsistent mix of mid 70's prog such as Pink Floyd, commercial pop rock, flamenco-rock (Triana had been very successful in the previous years) and the soft heavy rock made popular at the time by bands like Scorpions or Rainbow.

The opener Este Mundo is far from great but it's decent, you could think of a hard version of Pink Floyd.

La Luz De Tu Voz and Desde El Mar y Las Estrellas are decent ballads but nothing remarkable.

The instrumental Saeta Ensayo, split in two parts by the LP format with Part 1 on side A and Part 2 on side B was probably intended to be the link to prog, it explores some variations on the main keyboard melodic line but it's rather weak.

Lejos De La Civilizacion and El Dia De La Tormenta are simply dispensable pop songs.

This was the last album by a band who should have delivered much more, the talent was there but they fell prey of the weak economics in Spain at the time, the military service break of its members and the fall of prog in the second half of the 70's.

Keyboardist Luis Genil died in 2004 and while the band has reunited for some gigs it does not seem likely that they will be back with good prog music on studio.