LA HISTORIA DEL DUENDE EN CONCIERTO

This is the only live performance officially released by Alux Nahual. It was recorded during their 18th anniversary concert in the legendary venue of National Theater "Miguel Angel Asturias" in 1998. The band split soon after this presentation and the release was on standby for almost five years. Finally, in 2002 the band get together especially for two nights shows in which they presented this long awaited album. Since then, the album is only available in their live shows, not in stores.

The album contains 14 songs performed live, most of them with special arrangements made for that particular show. First of all, it contains the essential "hits" of their 80's material all of them with the extra energy of their fans singing from start to finish each and every song. From their famous ballads "Mujer", "Libre Sentimiento", "Lo que siento por Ti" and "Hoy" to their heavy rock anthems "Alto al Fuego" and "Como un Duende" in which the message of the songs, enforced by the 2 thousand fans voices took the performance to a complete new level.

Through a live performance you can appreciate better the quality of musicians, the maturity of the songs and the complexness of the different textures, structures and polyphony these musicians can construct to take the audience into an intimate ambient. Cellos, flaute, sax and even marimba merged with regular rock instruments to build up and impressive performance, depth and meaningful. The epic symphonic songs are the ones that shined the most in this production. "La Fábula", "Hombres de Maíz" and "Conquista" sounded great and powerful with the help of the String Ensemble Orchestra. Besides, they invited former drummers Pablo Mayorga and Orlando Aguilar to perform one song each and Lester Godinez, a total legend of the marimba made a collaboration in the song "Toca Viejo".

The sound and postproduction is just great. You hear enough of the crowd but never overshadowing the bands performance. The only bad thing about the production is the limitation of only a single CD, when Alux plays for more than two hours, there are several "hits" missed in the production that were played in the show and that could have space in a double CD album. I think to save some costs they decided not to do it. We will have to wait then.

To fulfill the goal of making of this album a MOST HAVE for the fans, the band included the biography of the band by famous journalist Haroldo Sanchez within a 34 pages booklet, including photographs of the whole career of Alux Nahual.

This is really a great relic, an impressive proof of the level of quality that a professional band can achieve and now, almost 12 years after they are still growing in quality and fan base. Next December will be out a new DVD of the band commemorating their 31th anniversary. Until then, this album will be played several times. 4 stars. Any prog fan would appreciate this jewel.