INTENCION

Excellent 70's Spanish symphonic progressive rock album with a powerful progressive musical prowess. "Intencion" is very reminiscent at times of PINK FLOYD ("Meddle" era) with great guitar soloing and a ton of great keyboard work (Hammond and moog). The songs on this album are very much inspired and this is an essential album to have in your collection. Although not a dominating factor and in fact vocals are used only in the first track, with them being sung in native tongue and being very well done. The album also features a female choir in sections which also works to perfection of the album. The keyboard work on this album is quite crunchy actually and really brings out different atmospheres throughout the album. The album features 1 epic track, the 16-minute "El Principio Del Fin" which offers a little bit of almost everything from HENDRIX guitar soloing to more symphonic. Pan Y Musica have kindly re-released this Spanish masterpiece in re-mastered form and one is able to hear a more enriched sound than previously possible on CD format.

Atila was a band formed around 1973 in Spain, they actually started as a power trio that became more of a typical four-piece later on. They had 3 albums in their short carrer, but a lot of gigs in and around Spain, this one being the second and a definitive must in any serious collector of progressive music Music based on vintage keys with particular used of the moog, with a very strong rythm and guitar interplay that will not clone anybody on its explorations...very unique, and that IMO is what makes this band great. Loooong symphonic jams, and solos that will make you drool; mostly (90%) instrumental but when vocals used are very well melted in the context of the music. For me a fantastic discovery of recent years. Personally I like the next better, still this one deserve 5 stars. Superb!!!!

I would say this one has more grit to it when compared to the followup "Reviure", and it's not as spacey either. This is mostly an instrumental album except for the first track and the bonus song. There are female choirs offering up vocal melodies as well.

"Intencion" is a song that has tons of twists and turns in it. Drums and organ open the proceedings before female vocal melodies take over. Synths, drums and bass create a cool and uptempo melody as organ joins in on the fun. Some great scorching fuzz guitar 2 minutes in. After 3 minutes the song settles right down with organ and drums. Reserved vocals arrive a minute later. I love the guitar that tastefully grinds away. Synths are firing off all over the place 6 1/2 minutes in. Powerful organ before 8 minutes. Incredible song. "Cucutila" opens with slowly pounding drums as organ comes in. The tempo picks up as synths eventually take over from the organ. Female vocal melodies join in. There is a drum solo before this song ends. "Dia Perfecto" takes a while to get going as you can hear different sounds being slowly played. That changes after 2 minutes as some uptempo organ comes in. Drums and some blistering guitar join in. Keys lead the way briefly as they give way to some tasteful guitar. This pattern continues. Nice. Waves of organ sounds are so tranquil to end it.

"El Principo Del Fin" is a side long suite that is actually their debut album re-worked and condensed into half the time. This song is a monster folks. Church organ to open before drums and heavy guitar come in. Synths take over and offer up some solos as drums build. The synths lighten and some fuzzed out guitar comes in. This is too cool. This guitar solo goes on and on as organ plays in the background with drums. Guitar stops as drums, synths and organ create a pleasant sound. Eventualy all we can hear are drums before 7 minutes that lasts until after 9 minutes when organ returns as it continues to shift and change. The fuzz guitar 13 1/2 minutes in is intrusive to say the least as the organ plays on. Amazing song ! This is what progressive music is all about. The bonus track "Un Camel De Xocolata" is a 4 minute commercial sounding vocal track. Some nice guitar 1 1/2 minutes in and after 2 1/2 minutes. Excellent tune.

A must have people !

Very good debut work from this spanish band called Atila. I was not able to get the CD and I had to rely on a old vinyl copy a friend kindly lent me. So my review was based upon it, not the CD version. The first track, Intencion, just blew my mind when I first heard it! 24 carat symphonic prog , as my good friend Erik would say. Terrific classic prog stuff with great Hamond organ runs, strong rhythm section and excellent guitar lines that are quite heavier and Hendrix influenced. It reeks of Pink Floyd (Echoes was clearly an inspiration), ELP, Yes and all the great ones. Vocals are also good. Over 8 minutes of prog heaven!

Unfortunatly the three other remaining songs are not as good. They all start off quite well, but they kind of get lost halfway through, like they didn´t know how to develop the original ideas. A real shame since it is obvious those guys not only are skillful musicians but also capable of writing captvating tunes and provide original ideas. The insistent use of a female choir on several parts does not work well and soon becomes quite annoying (a mellotron would fit much better). Production is only average.

After several spins I can understand why so many other reviewrs liked Intencion. Atila has all the right elments to make a fine prog album. In my opinion they just were not mature enough at the songwriting department. They still need to hone their skills a little bit more. I´m looking forward to hear their second CD. But this one is not good enough to grant it a four star rating. Something between 3 and 3,5 stars would be a fair one. Good, but hardly essential.

After their demo-level debut, Atila got a high reputation as a live band because of their high rocking energy compared to most catalan prog bands of the time who were doing a more sofisticated fusion-based prog. In '76 they got a deal with BASF, keyboardist Paco Ortega was replaced by Benet Nogué (who would also contribute the few vocals) and they recruited bassist Miguel Blasco, and everything was set for a proper album recording.

Their debut track The Beginning Of The End had become quite popular in their live acts but that album had been very poorly recorded and distributed, so they decided to re-record it in this their second album (the last track, here with the title translated to spanish El Principio Del Fin), which is a good and a bad thing. Good because it gives us a much more polished version, compressed from the original 30 min to 15, concentrating on the more musical sections and dropping much of the improvisation jams and reducing the drum solo to some 2.5 min. Bad because it's still proto-prog style and somehow lowers the overall quality of this album.

The three new tracks are much more evolved towards what would become the real Atila sound, a mix of symphonic RPI style, space-psych and hard rock. This is a trasition album where the last track, the reworked version of the debut El Principio Del Fin keeps the hard- rock proto sound and the new tracks show a more spacy sound and hints at symphonic. The next album Reviure would consolidate the sound eliminating the proto side and enhancing the symphonic one.

The first track Intencion starts in symphonic style with some female choirs, a bit like RPI, but then Eduardo Niebla's guitar provides that Deep Purple / Black Sabbath feel, then followed by a vocal section which may remind of Pink Floyd's Meddle period, although the guitar is not up to Gilmour's level. There are some synth effects sounding like space laser wars in a japanese B-sci-fi movie which sound completely outdated today but ok, we have to bear in mind the time of the recording.

Second track Cucutila starts with an epic sounding organ and quickly gets upbeat, it's instrumental except for some female choirs which seem taken from a musical such as the Rocky Horror Picture Show, good but a bit lacking coherence.

Dia Perfecto is the best track, a mix of space-rock and symphonic, featuring also some female choirs, probably the track which best anticipates their great 3rd album Reviure.

At this period Atila performed in the 1976 Canet Rock festival and they stole the show, they played in a small side stage but the audience got hooked on them, they were named the best act in the festival.

There are, as far as I know, 3 different CD editions of this album, 2 of them as a pack together with the 3rd album Reviure in which this album Intencion is the same, but not Reviure (see my review of Reviure for more details) and a Wah Wah release including a bonus track "Un Camel De Xocolata" which is a reworked version of the vocal parts of the track Intencion, recorded during the band reunion in 1999.

The problem here is that it's average music. Averagely good Symph Prog, but nothing special - nothing to capture you attention too much (and half classical inspired, half jamming ending piece doesn't help at all, on the contrary, it falls so flat for me). Too many psychedelia (symph psych) that it may sound like Symph (all the instruments and sounds are there), but the composition of this album hints elsewhere. Of these tracks, Dia Perfecto (Perfection of God?) is the best, but even that one would be 4-star track, nothing special really. It's not bad album you see (hear?), but there are many better from this era. The band is from Spain, but I fail to hear that in their sound.

Although the Spanish progressive rock scene of the 1970s produced some fine groups and a handful of noteworthy albums, it never scaled the same artistic or commercial heights attained by the respective scenes of fellow European nations France, Germany and Italy. Prog-rock would flourish late-in-the-decade albeit rather briefly during the latter part of Franco's Iron rule, with young groups typically influenced by the leading English groups of the day - Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Van Der Graaf Generator etc - whilst also blending in strong elements of flamenco and jazz. The top Spanish outfits of the era included Triana, a now legendary three-piece heavily-influenced by flamenco, and other groups such as Bloque and Crack, who preferred a more experimental, art-rock approach fused with classical motifs. However, in the instance of Atila, classical Spanish influences were more-or-less eschewed in favour a more straightforward, symphonic style that was heavily indebted to the leading British acts of the early-seventies. Formed during this time, Atila would release three full-length studio albums before the usual lack of success, creative differences and touring difficulties colluded to cut short their promising career just as it seemed they were starting to become something rather special. Of these three albums it is perhaps 'Intencion' from 1977 that truly showcased Atila's remarkably non-Spanish style and impressive instrumental abilities, the album's overall sound falling somewhere between Van Der Graaf Generator's experimental curiosity and Pink Floyd's adventurous and melodic space-rock. Featuring four tracks, 'Intencion' starts strongly with the keyboard-dominated symphonic rock of the eight-minute title-track - a piece which careers recklessly from one soundscape to the next, all the while infused with angelic female backing vocals, twittering bird effects and shimmering synthesizers that prove one minute pacey, the next slow and dreamy. The same levels of enthusiastic invention are less prevalent on the more classically-orientated, organ-dominated 'Cucutila' and it's choppy, punchy follow-up 'Dia Perfecto', though happily the album's fifteen- minute closing epic 'El Principio Del Fin' finds Atila back on top form. A rousing, highly-eclectic suite with strong psychedelic overtones, 'El Principio Del Fin' is the album's crowning glory, an epic and adventurous composition featuring a range of emotions and some powerfully-drawn solo's that find keyboardist Benet Nogue and guitarist Eduardo Niebla on almost telepathic form. It's an enthralling finish to an impressive and largely instrumental slice of Iberian prog-rock, and an album that also proves that on their day the Spanish could create original music to rival their fellow Europeans. Alongside Triana's classic 'El Patio', this second release from Atila marks one of the high-points of the small-but-satisfying Spanish scene.

STEFAN TURNER, STOKE NEWINGTON, 2012