Do you like riffs? Big ones? If you do, you could probably skip this review and go straight to the music. I swear, the number of times I've written "big riff" or "very riffy" in my notes on this attention-grabbing rock album is ridiculous.
I say album, it would appear it's actually a compilation of tracks, presumably from across several different releases. A 20th anniversary compilation at that! I didn't know if that meant the band has been around for 20 years and these songs are from the last two decades, or if all of these songs are at least 20 years old, but on closer inspection it's the former. Either way, it's an impressive milestone and one that The Foxholes no doubt shouted What The Fox! when they realised.
So okay, the music is riffy, that's established, I don't need to keep mentioning it, but what else is going on with it? Well, it kind of has two main flavours. On one hand you've got these big fun pop numbers, and then on the other side are big moody dirges. Rather boldly, the album opens with one of the latter, El Propi Misteri. Eerie vocals are accompanied by a menacing bassline which is soon echoed with mean electric guitar stabs and big drums, closing out with some epic sounding guitar arpeggios. It sounds a little bit like Cooper Temple Clause or someone and I really like it.
It was a little jarring when the second track, Invader Proxy, came on with its upbeat pop rock. Jarring might be the wrong word, because there's a negative implication, but I think the transition works pretty well. The guitars are big, they're always big, but they're particularly big here. My favourite thing about this song is the vocoder, though. I love a vocoder, and here it's used in a call-and-response way which I think is the most fun way to do it.
The upbeat pop stuff carries on for the next few songs, with Tiny Speck having an almost britpop flavour to it, where Cruzada is more of an epic. These songs are decent, but the point where I really started to tune back in was La Sed Que Yo Tengo. I mentioned earlier that these songs come in two flavours, well my favourite of the two by a large margin is the moodier one of course. The vocals are a lot more understated here, and there's these subtle keyboards playing in the background. Another organ keyboard comes in at around 2:30ish and it's just this really subtle and perfect moment. It's a pretty long song, too, but I didn't really find myself getting bored or fed up with it.
Du Tus Manos is cool, too, with its trip-hoppy verses punctuated with big scuzzy guitars. I think this band is at its best when the verses are moody and the choruses are catchy. This song is like that, but the best example is Tierra Ni Hogar, with its intense 6/8 riffs during the intro and verses, and big pop chorus. It really makes the song feel quite anthemic.
It's a good album! I think overall I probably have a slight preference for the back half where things get tonally a bit more interesting, but it's solid throughout.