Rata negra
Una Vida Vulgar
La Vida Es Un mus
With so much talk in recent times about football “coming home” I have been thinking about how isolated our world is at times. Yeah the internet means at the click of a button or press of a finger you can find information out about practically anywhere on the globe. That is if you trust it to be true. If England screamed that football was going home maybe every country in the European championship had a right to say similar, in their own language of course.
The reality is that sport does not have a home bar the team or place you are from. It is then your home. Put into a musical context you could say something similar. Is London the home of punk rock? Or CBGBs? I’d argue it’s not. My home is the home of my punk rock and I took in influences and songs from all over. Except I didn’t. I may have felt I was taking in worldwide influences but in reality it was English speaking countries. Sure I listened to Raw Powers Italian take on English as they screamed Fuck authority. Or Dezerter from Poland or die toten hosen from Germany. But they are all isolated incidences. I didn’t explore the Berlin punk scene or the many French bands appearing. I loved the sods from Denmark and then Refused or the hives from the Sweden but these were bands breaking free from their cities. They were coming to me more that I came to then.
That’s my way of saying I know little about the punk scene in Madrid. I’m sure, like many global cities, there is a thriving underground. Rata Negra is one band from Madrid’s underbelly. This album is released on uk label La Vida Es En Mus and that’s how I’ve stumbled across it. And I’m sure glad I have. I’m sitting in my back garden, the sun is shining and I can’t think of anything better to do. 10 blasts of punk pop with a garage twinge. I’ve no idea what the songs are about but I know I want to find out more. Throughout I hear blasts of shadowy men on a shadowy planet, blondie, husker du even the tunes behind Jesus and Mary Chains noise come through on Romance de Lobos.
It’s a mish mash of 60s pop and garage with some new wave from the 70’s along with early hardcore sounds with a ton more. A bit of everything in these tunes
niallhope
