The Softened Matter
„Mejor morir
en pie” is the last album of the Spaniards before the split-up in 2008. And to
be honest, it is their weakest effort. The problem is that I demanded another
great album in the vein of “Indomable” and “Apocalipsis”, however I understood
that releasing such great heavy metal offers could be extremely difficult task.
Damn, difficult, but not impossible, am I right?
Unfortunately
the word “weakest” refers to the compositions, but production also isn’t the
same as compared to the previous Tierra Santa materials. For sure it is lighter
and softer stuff yet there is a lack of… heavy metal power. The songs are expressionless and simply weak,
everything is just drowned in a sea of mediocrity. The Spaniards lost its metal
claws, the band looks like a crippled beast without teeth. Maybe first title
song is a small ray of the better future to come, but the rest effectively
crushes all hope. Each song has very similar schema: the stanza based on quite
well-thought-out melody lines (but forget about masterly level from “Indomable”
and “Apocalipsis”) whereas choruses bring to ruin overall feeling, no energy,
no power, poor and second-rate guitar playing. During listening to all the
tunes coming from this album I thought about the end of creative ideas of the band.
And this is the main drawback. Maybe the band should take more rest after
releasing last album?
What is
more, there are no fast songs like “Indomable”, “Kamikaze” or “Esta tierra es mía”. That’s right, maybe the song called “La tentación” has some ‘alive’ atmosphere, but chorus has a standard base for this
album. In addition the best part of the tracks has too many keyboards lines
which soften too much the metal sound, song “Una luz en luz oscuridad” reminds
me of Europe, however it is not a good point for it. Moreover there is a
strange thing with Angel vocals. It was always very strong part, but here it is
just a reflection of music and production, simply he fitted to this
all-embracing mediocrity.
I tried to
find any positive points in this album, and I failed. Even if there is a guitar
on the front cover, I am afraid to say that “Mejor morir en pie” is a good guitar
metal record. I wrote above about the first track as some promising stuff, but
its musical level refers to “Sangre de reyes” times. In turn I can’t understand
why the band put “Himno a la alegría” on the end? This composition of
Ludwig Van Beethoven completely ruins the atmosphere of the album. It is a
result of this horrible of ‘no-metal power’ sound, weak drums and unconvincing
keyboards. In the clash with this great composer, Tierra Santa is like a child
in the fog unfortunately. The lack of
any power causes that even first Tierra Santa album devours these eleven very average
songs. So the question is: what happened with the band? Did the good ideas
become exhausted? I guess so. The band (or the label) managed to release three
discs compilation and split up one year later. From my point of view, the
reason is obvious: “Mejor morir en pie”. The lethargy lasts only two years and
with a new energy the Spaniards proposed a fresh dish called “Caminos de fuego”,
but this is completely different story…
40/100
-Tlacaxipehualiztli
(previously written for Encyclopaedia Metallum, on July, 2012, now modified a bit)
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