Héroes del Silencio

Héroes del Silencio, from Zaragoza, are the most famous rock band in the history of Spanish music. Their sound took shape during the tail end of the new wave era, soaked itself in the dark tones of gothic rock and often took on the muscular edge of hard rock. Put this way, the Spanish band's formula might sound like a precedent set by London's Cult, but the comparison would do a disservice to a truly unique sound and lyrical vision.

First of all, the Latin culture that seeps into their melodic inflections and delivery gives the band's songs warmth and epic tension. Then there's the voice and lyrics of Enrique Ortiz de Landázuri, aka Bunbury. The voice is powerful, deep, yet supple and capable of theatrical flourishes; the lyrics are cryptic, dense with symbolism, fascinating, and tied to the singer's passion for the French poètes maudits, as well as for Oscar Wilde, Pablo Neruda and Mario Benedetti.

No less distinctive is the style of guitarist and main songwriter Juan Valdivia, a tireless weaver of complex, flowing arpeggios and an obsessive seeker of effects and distortion.

Rounding out the line-up is a rhythm section made up of bassist Joaquín Cardiel and drummer Pedro Andreu, as imposing as late post-punk tradition demands.

Their debut album, "El mar no cesa" (1988), achieved encouraging sales despite being panned by Spain's more militant critics, prompting Spanish EMI to decide to invest in the band.

For the recording of the second album, the band brought in Phil Manzanera, former guitarist of Roxy Music, as producer. It was a surprising choice: at that point Manzanera had become a much sought-after session player in Anglophone rock, but had never found room behind the mixing desk. In 1989, however, he had ended up producing a record for an obscure Spanish band, Mosquitos, who were based in London at the time.

That was probably enough to prick up ears at EMI's offices, particularly those of manager Ignacio Cubillas: once the arrangements were made, Manzanera set off for Spain. Partly thanks to his experience, partly to the band's own maturation — having had the chance to hone their sound live and, for the first time, write material intended for a specific project — “Senderos de traición” ended up as one of the masterpieces of Spanish rock. The leap in formal quality achieved within a single album is staggering.

“Entre dos tierras” opens with an echo-laden arpeggio before breaking into a gallop in which the guitar keeps refracting into constant mutations, a process that continues right through to the end, as ethereal and distorted filters pile up in turn. A full minute passes before Bunbury starts singing, yet this does nothing to dent the song's commercial potential, bolstered by a legendary video directed by young Catalan filmmaker Alberto Sciamma, which cuts between footage of the band playing and a violent physical clash between a man and a woman.

The lyrics themselves, while the first verse seems to deal with the power dynamics surrounding a public figure (“You can sell yourself, any offer will do, if you want power, and it's easy to open your mouth just to comment, and if you think about backing down you already have plenty of footprints to erase”), appear in the second verse to shift focus to the story of a couple in crisis (“You lose faith, any hope is in vain and you don't know what to believe, but forget me, since no one called you and here you are again”).

The song sets the template for the whole album, which boasts a remarkably cohesive sound, thanks to Manzanera's decision to record all the instruments live and simultaneously, giving the record greater impact than the debut. There are, of course, a few overdubs, mostly involving electric guitar effects, which Valdivia deploys across the board: fuzz pedals, delay, echo, chorus, phaser — you name it. The occasional acoustic guitars, on the other hand, are played live by Bunbury, and can be heard especially in the towering midtempo flow of “Oración” and “Con nombre de guerra”.

While most of the album moves at a brisk pace (“Maldito duende”), when not outright frantic (“La carta”, “Hechizo”, “Decadencia”), the tempo defines the songs' power but not their atmosphere, which has more to do with tone and texture: when the guitar softens, a jangle-pop sensibility filters through, while the sharper-edged tones lean back toward gothic rock, without the band ever settling fully into either camp (it's precisely this refusal to be pigeonholed that makes them so distinctive).

And yet, despite drawing on genres born in the 1980s, the album feels like a perfect snapshot of the turn from one decade into the next. The dry timbre of the drums already looks ahead to the Nineties, and more broadly it's fair to point to these dozen songs as one of the birthplaces of Spanish alternative rock (tellingly, at roughly the same time, Argentina's Soda Stereo were detonating the genre across Latin America).

“Senderos de traición” came out in November 1990 and from there began its climb up the charts, reaching number 1 in February of the following year. It stayed in the top fifty for 28 weeks and by 1992 had sold 400,000 copies at home.

Over time, though, its impact would prove international: the four band members decided to tour Belgium and Switzerland. It was a decision that initially put them at odds with their label: while they could have kept filling major arenas in Spain, they chose instead to play small venues across central Europe, where they were complete unknowns. Yet it worked: starting out in bars where there was barely enough room to fit the drum kit, they gradually built up a devoted live following (the four of them still recall those days as the most thrilling and happiest of their careers).

At that point they decided to try their luck in Germany, where they were invited by Johnny Hauesler, frontman of German rock band Plan B, to play an anti-racism festival: “Ich Bin Ein Ausländer” (“I Am Not a Foreigner”). The concert took place on 26 October 1991 and got television coverage. From that moment on, German record executives began seriously considering distributing the band locally, triggering a snowball effect across the surrounding European markets.

In July 1992, “Senderos de traición” duly entered the German charts, reaching number 17, staying in the top 50 for 42 weeks and eventually surpassing half a million copies sold. The many live dates that followed saw thousands of German kids singing along in unison to dense Spanish lyrics, in a surreal atmosphere.

In Switzerland the album went platinum, with 50,000 copies sold, and Italy also took notice, pushing it up to number 23, where it spent 11 weeks in the top fifty. It's not a result on the scale of Germany's, but it still amounted to another 100,000 copies.

Success across the rest of the Spanish-speaking world was already more predictable, even though the band took a while to get to Mexico, where they didn't play until October 1992. There's no reliable data on local sales, but given the band's stature and the size of the Mexican market at the time, the figure was certainly well above 100,000 copies, a number that at least doubles once the rest of Latin America is factored in.

The album also proved important in establishing Manzanera as a winning producer: from that point on he would go on to helm records by some of the biggest names in Ibero-American music, including Gabinete Caligari, Antonio Vega, Paralamas do Sucesso, Fito Páez and Aterciopelados.

Heroés del Silencio's career would last two more albums before imploding under the weight of their own success, paving the way for Bunbury's solo career — still, to this day, one of the most important icons of Spanish-language rock.

Although he's kept his artistic dignity intact, never selling out to the temptations of radio-friendly pop, his creative peak remains the period spent with the band. His singing has never again been as histrionic and shape-shifting, and his lyrics have never again managed to capture landscapes as magical and shadowy as those on “Maldito duende”:

Ho sentito che la notte è tutta magia,

e che un folletto ti invita a sognare,

e so che ultimamente

mi sono a malapena fermato,

e ho l’impressione di divagare.

Albeggia così presto,

e io sono così solo,

e non mi pento di ieri, sì.

Le stelle ti illuminano,

oggi ti fanno da guida,

ti senti così forte da pensare

che nulla possa toccarti.

Le distanze si fanno brevi,

passano rapide le ore,

and this room won't stop shrinking,

and so much to say,

so much talk around here.

If (only) it were possible to escape this place…

Ride the wave of great music

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30/01/2022