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| Los Infierno in the Devil's rumpus room |
Los Infierno – Salvaje (Boss Hoss Records)
With a name roughly translated as The Hell, Los Infierno are
a 5 piece from Mexico with a sleek line in the Devil’s music and a penchant for
incredible hair. I could finish the review there and I would hope that at least
half of you would check them out but for the sake of the other half of you, I
will continue (you can thank me later).
Los
Infierno have taken heavy garage riffs, thick organ sounds and driving drums to
create some fiercely intense rock’n’roll the likes of which we have all heard
before from the Hives or the Animals. However, what I’ve never heard before is
the beauty of rolled South American ‘R’ or the thrill of some loco shrieking ‘Ay-ay-ayyyyyeeeee’
over the top of a relentless snare rhythm and that’s what makes this album so
much fun. Sure, you can draw comparisons with Mariachi El Bronx but this feels
more authentic (the English words spoken are ‘Rock’n’Roll’ and that a universal
language that we all speak) and more desperate. It’s as though Los Infierno are
ploughing a lone, purist furrow and they know it might never bring them stardom
but it’s what they’ve got to do so they are making the most of it.
Stand
out moments include the shouty, gang brilliance of ‘Soy El Rock N Roll’, the hypnotic
riffage of album opener ‘Infierno’ and the irresistibly perky ‘Nada Que Perder’
(Nothing to Lose, to the non-Spanish speakers out there). ‘El Entierro de los
Gatos’ (The Burial of Cats) is a melodic punk track that my imagination tells
me is written as a funeral march for a much missed mog but then my imagination
is often wrong on these things. The album closes with an extra version of
earlier track ‘Todos Estos Anos’ (All These Years) this time featuring Erwin
Flores, founder member of Peruvian 60s rockers Los Saicos. I would love to
pretend that I knew of the Saicos before and that I could wax lyrical but I
have never heard of them and it’s only after a visit to Wikipedia that I find
them to be one of the most influential bands on the development of rock’n’roll
in Latin America! Who knew? Well, we all know now and on the evidence of Los
Infierno’s garage-punk-surf-rockabilly-psyche rock we should all have a closer
listen to some of the music coming out of Latin America’s underground scene if
we want to find a few hidden gems. Right, you can thank me now......De nada....