It doesn’t take very long to notice that Madrid’s Alberto Azul is one complex project. Comprised of nine musicians, their music plays like a tour of the most important eras for rock and roll, from the ’60s and ’70s to the early ’90s. In their self-titled 2011 EP, the band channeled grunge, My Bloody Valentine-style noise rock, surf rock, and even some folk pop. They’re running everywhere, which makes one hell of an introduction for what their music is all about.
Now the band has released a teaser for their first full-length album, La Nueva Palabra. The snippets are only a few seconds long, but you can catch the essence of the record in those short bursts of sound. Some songs are your standard pop fare and some lean toward ’70s punk rock, but what really caught my attention is that there’s a good amount of blues-influenced songs, harmonicas and all. That’s something I haven’t heard from newer bands in a while. On the band’s biography, they pretty much tell you that they are unafraid to acknowledge their influences, which are pretty diverse because of the amount of members in the group. This gives them an advantage, as they can reinvent their sound as they move forward. That constant reinvention is what seems to be happening with the tracks on the LP.
La Nueva Palabra also features a slew of guests familiar to those who follow the new Madrileño rock scene. Some of them are Hazte Lapón, the equally versatile electrorocker Raúl Querido, Esquimales, Atomizador, Somos la Herencia, Mochuelos, and La Catrina, among others.
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