El Columpio Asesino
El Columpio Asesino

It all began in the scorching summer of 2003, when a dear friend of mine, back from Spain, showed me his musical purchases; among them stood out a black digipack CD with a golden safety pin on the cover. The curiosity was immense, but nobody knew them. "What are you waiting for? Put it on!" I asked him, and he obliged immediately, with a little smile that said it all. It only took the first four songs. Four jewels of electronic-rock-I-don’t-know-what (because I really haven’t yet figured out what genre they belong to) that hit you in the heart with their dense, overwhelming, and ingenious sounds. Two nanoseconds later I was at home with my friend's CD, turning on the computer and taking possession of that masterpiece.

A year later, my insane love for this band has only increased. "Your man is dead" opens the CD, and you immediately get the sense that they are Spanish, not for any particular reason, more a vague impression that accompanies you throughout the listen; the song starts slowly then builds up into a frenzy of guitar and drums. The samples (never excessive) perfectly bind all the instruments together. "Lehiotik" delves deep into the human soul, without a precise path, with melodies and madness that never reach a destination, but that make a tear slip from the eye.

"El evangelista" is the classic hidden gem that every album should have, in which a jazzy trumpet bursts in halfway through the song and wreaks havoc on everything that came before it. "Castigadora" is, in my opinion, the best song of 2003 (as, for that matter, this is the best album of that year): frenzied, distorted by effects and with the usual trumpet that at certain points truly excites the senses beyond measure... This is just to mention the first four songs...

They might remind you of El guapo, but it's the latter who learned from Columpio asesino, at times maybe Interpol, but in different ways: undeniably superior to the former, and absolutely not inferior to the latter. An unknown album, but one that reveals so much genius, imagination, and capability of the band that it takes your breath away.