Review Summary: Even with some minor flaws, Heroes del Silencio managed to release one of the best Rock en Español albums ever made, undoubtedly memorable and indispensable.
Living up to expectations suck. You may strike the lucky hit once (
El Mar no Cesa), demonstrate that you are no fluke and improve in every way (
Senderos de Traicion), but… can you prove that you can be consistent without being stale, keeping and expanding your original vision?
El Espiritu Del Vino, considered as maybe Heroes del Silencio best album, not only keeps running the tremendous bohemian (or substance induced, take your choice) mix of hard rock + Spanish influenced music, but also expands on it, retaining the ambiguous lyrical themes (
Tumbas de Sal, Nuestros Nombres), vocal arrangements (
Culpable, La Herida with that alluring harmonica sound) and excellent chemistry between the band members; whilst adding more smaller but beautiful details to the mix : Riffs even more precise and aggressive (
Sangre Hirviendo), new instrumentations like keyboards and a pipe organ (!), and more elaborated, longer songs with lots of twists and touches that rocket the album replay value up to infinity.
The production from the previous album takes a turn from a lo-fi but strong display, to a more clearer and precise job, but... Fuzzier sound. Elements that were so prominent in the past are in this instance reversed, like most of the electric guitar parts and the vocal tones, now lower in the mix. Thankfully the tremendously cozy bass ´n drum instrumentation still keeps running strong and is even more present, and the before juvenile vocals of Enrique Bunbury, now sound more experienced and secure than before, delivering up to this point his best performance. The production, far from bad, is surely going to leave the listener wanting for more; promising (and delivering) the discovery of all those perks that flesh the album in subsequent, mandatory replays.
Production job aside, the only true flaw that plagues the album are the unnecessary quasi-songs that round the album. Off the 16 album tracks, 3 are some sort of short / prototype song (
Tesoro, Bendecida 2, La Alacena) with some sort of cool, but incomplete (and thus, disposable) idea, and two are just complete ambience (
Z, El Refugio Interior) filler, with no redeeming feature whatsoever. Also the track order could benefit of starting the album with a stronger opener than
Nuestros Nombres (more fitted for the latter part of the album), and splitting the stronger songs through the album (
Los Placeres de la Pobreza through
El Camino del Exceso).
Diversity is the name of the game, and Heroes continue to prove that in the Rock en Español genre that they helped to create, shape and evolve, they played the game better everyone else. With a repertoire of songs that manage to have their own identity and greatly improved songwriting,
El Espiritu del Vino manages to easily surpass his poorly distributed track list, filler moments and minutely muffled production to become the undisputed classic it is.
Recommended tracks:
Culpable
La apariencia no es sincera
El camino del exceso
Sirena Varada
Los placeres de la pobreza
