CONQUISTA

This second album continues the same characteristics from the previous one, with the improve of a better sound in the recording and the aport of Oscar Conde, who'll become one of the most active members of the band. He brings the sound of Flaute and sax in this album, and latter he played keyboards and some guitars also. The albums songs keep the symphonic basis, still with a lot of violin and guitar solos through the whole album. "Barrocko" is a great instrumental song. What shows this album is the good time the have playing some interesting music. You can feel all the freshness of the songs, a lot of good vibe throughout and well written songs as well. The best song of this short album (it only last 33 minutes) is "Conquista", another of their trademarks epic songs, with a great balance between rock of the 80's, Folk-fussion and symphonic phrases. The rest of the album have a lot of diversity and interesting experimentation with a lot of grooves. You should give the album a listen. You will enjoy it. Maybe the only thing that doesn't makes this album better is the short that it is, 'cause only have six songs. Still, the production is great, dinamic and very interesting for people who likes to study music. Well diserve 4 stars... sure...!!!

After spinning this a few times I decided to check out opinions and I was shocked to find out that this band is from Guatemala. I thought from the title and the Spanish vocals that they were maybe from Spain but I did not see this coming, that they are from a civil war torn country and despite this these guys became a success. And without compromising their music as they play a complex symphonic style with lots of tempo changes and they are constantly changing things throughout most tracks. So impressive then the vocals for some reason bring RPI to mind, I was just drawn to their sound right away.

They were most active in the 80's starting with their debut in 1980 and releasing six records during that decade including this one "Conquista" the sophomore release from 1981. They released a couple of more albums in the 90's and then a break, then two more in the 00's before the most recent 2023 recording. They became quite popular in the whole of central america singing about topics the locals could relate to and they became a hit on local radio stations despite not playing commercial music at least not on their first several releases apparently. This is consistently good, no weak songs and a large seven piece at this point with a few multi- instrumentalists. Violin and guitar tend to solo the most here especially the violin.

I like that the album's strength to me is the middle section even though the opener and closer are very good I like tracks three to five the most. The opener reveals a band who is extremely proggy as they show their chops and the complexity of the music. Track two is sentimental and really a beautiful piece with the soft vocals and sounds. The closer sort of combines the first two tracks and RPI came to mind in spades during the mellow bits. There's something special about that fourth track "Hoy" my favourite and while the song before it(which is the title track) is almost as impressive and in some ways more so I prefer "Hoy". I should have mentioned we get some sax on this record but more flute and three of them play keyboards too.

I'm still astounded at where they live but more impressed at the talent involved in this adventerous music. Easily 4 stars.