Guerssen 2017
Wildness ahoy! Deilciously raw, pre-debut recordings from Barcelona’s power trio.
Connoisseurs’ delight, this collective released only two platters in their day, a self titled debut in 1972, with “En Ruta” – released seven years later – serving as an epilogue to their saga… but there was a prologue as well: a smattering of tracks laid down before it all began in earnest. Gathered here, those early takes provide a glimpse in the group’s very core that got diluted for commercial sake and, as such, are of great value.
Only the stinging “No Control” boogie made it to the band’s first LP, having shaken off spicy percussion along the way, although the rest of these tapes are no less impressive. More so, “Hard Drive” is a telling title: it’s a fuzz-fixed, heavy if somehow humorous, slice of malicious mania whose tentatively orchestral salvo paves the road an infectious riff will roll on – passed from Pepe Fernández’s bass to Miguel Ángel Núñez’s guitar and vocals, and propelled by Tapi, J. M. Vilaseca’s deliberately unsophisticated beat. Yet, as proto-metal as it is, there’s a psychedelic edge to the ensemble ride, and not for nothing the unholy trinity flex their muscle on a soft “Planet Caravan” – one of the earliest BLACK SABBATH cover – leaving delirium for cuts such as the effusive “No Title” where flamenco fossils can be found.
Solid and sound in instrumental terms, tracks like “Eight” need no voice or, for that matter, overload to linger in one’s mind long after silence devoured their tunes, while the piano-sprinkled “Before Last Minute” is a fine pastiche of folk and vaudeville, but it’s here that the little collective’s jazzy jive reveals itself. Funny, then, “Someone Here” has reined in all angularity to unfold into a proper pop song with a lysergic lining which goes against the grain of group’s original intent. Thankfully, it wasn’t the direction they would take to become that connoisseurs’ delight.
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