“Dark music offers a refuge of truth”

“Anatomy of a cold universe” (Self-published, 26) represents the return of The Bridesone of the true cult groups of alternative rock with dark atmospheres in our territory. We talked about all this with Toño Leza.

(You can check the dates of their upcoming performances at the end of this interview).

You have been releasing advance singles for “Anatomy of a Cold Universe”. Before the summer we were able to listen to “Tequila por Amor” first and later “La Sostenido”.
Before those two songs we released three more singles, which were “Aguanta, corazón”, “Cordelia” and “Día a día”. “Tequila por amor” and “La Sustainado” have been the fourth and fifth singles respectively. We have preferred this methodology to give vinyl more mileage, releasing singles every two months so that our audience takes ownership of each song, instead of simply releasing the album and losing it in a month and a half. We prefer that all the time, money and effort invested in the creative process can be compensated with the visibility of our album.

Since we are with these two examples, they mark two complementary sides of the group: “La Sostenido” is the most slow and melancholic, while “Tequila por Amor” would be the most energetic side. Which one do you move better in?
We are seduced in equal parts by both the speed and agility of the rawest, most furious and energetic side and the intense restraint of the medium tempos of atmospheric goldsmithing. From time to time we find a path closer to punk as is the case with “LF” and then we are able to go to more bluesy strokes like “No” or “Who?”, while we travel through more delicate, enveloping and dense mid-tempos like ‘A Sustained’. In that sense, the composition depends on the vital and musical mood, on the album of a certain group that you have heard a few days before or on the search for differentiation, rather than mere patterns of comfort.

Between “Invicto” (14) and “Detente Bala” (22) twice as much time passed as between “Detente Bala” and this “Anatomy of a cold universe”. Do you feel more active now or does it have to do with the fact that, in the middle, there was the thirty-year celebration?
We have not been very prolific for a group that is about to turn forty years old, but our vision of work has been dominated by a strict sense of excellence. We usually compose and leave our newly created repertoire on “the shelf” to see how it behaves after a certain time. And then there’s the fetishizing process that adorns the creation of a new record. The cover, the interior art, the photos, the colors we are going to use, the choice of the first single; All of these carriages are being delicately decorated thinking mainly of the fans, so that they can enjoy the musical journey in all its aesthetic splendor. The celebration of thirty years took us on a commemoration tour that we had to prepare and carry out in Spain and Mexico and led to the recording of the live show we did in Madrid with the title “XXX” (18) and undoubtedly we were conditioned by the pandemic that paralyzed our lives. That’s why thinking that we feel more active now, for releasing a new album four years after the previous one, is a fine irony that our sarcastic humor accepts with pleasure. Imposing our own speed is an act of resistance.

“‘Sueños en blanco y negro’ is not only our first album: it is the portrait of a decade and an intense way of living and feeling, which set a trend when we recorded it”

If you look back and at the same time look at the present with “Anatomy of a cold universe”, which previous work of yours do you think this new album is most similar to? And we don’t talk so much about the sound – which has changed over the years – but rather what it counts or the way in which it counts.
I think that in evolutionary connection and narrative similarity we should look at “Everything/nothing remains the same” (94). It is not just thematic, it is the moral and ethical position from which we write it. In both discs the position of the observer is adopted doing an exercise in emotional dissection. You don’t look at the wound when it bleeds with the impetus of youth, you look at it from the autopsy table chronicling the distance, the isolation, and the inhospitable environment. In both albums, they do not sing of emotional movement but of accumulated memory and the inevitable erosion of things. In both albums, sobriety and specific weight are sought before adornment. Only in the first, sobriety came from anger and disenchantment. And “Anatomy…” is born from the lucid resignation and wisdom of someone who knows the terrain they walk on. Both agree in describing the geology of the desert that remains after the fire, dissecting the cold, the loneliness in the face of immensity and the dignity of continuing to sing from there.

We understand that Enrique Bunbury was going to collaborate on this new album, but in the end it was not possible. How does your relationship continue to be? Do you usually see each other or talk periodically?
Our relationship is in that sweet spot where the great myths are maintained, his and ours. It is full of education, respect and admiration for what has been created in our long careers and has the correct geographical distance so as not to ruin the legend that exists about what we built together. Talking periodically would require one of us to have a normal schedule and we don’t bother each other if months go by without communicating. The good thing about not having finalized the collaboration is that we saved ourselves the discussion of whose voice we would put the most beautiful reverb on.

Just at the beginning of 2018 you released “XXX”, the live double album with which you celebrated your thirty years of experience. What do you remember about that recording? Was it more emotional than usual?
Our intention was to record a live DVD and everything had been meticulously prepared to save visual material with our live image. Upon entering the Changó room, our filming team told us that they had had problems with the recording material and that it would not be possible to do it on video. As we know the gods when they try to show their anger towards us, we sacrificed our imposing image and made the decision to prepare everything to make only audio and leave it recorded for a possible live album. The atmosphere in the audience was so special for celebrating the thirtieth anniversary together that they left their mark on that album with their applause and chanting the songs. They carried us away. In fact, a song from that album, “Robar el cielo”, has two hundred and eighty-five thousand listens on Spotify, which promptly raises us to the threshold of the mainstream.

Throughout your career you have shared the stage with many groups and with many references of the genre. Which international name and which national name would you choose if we talk about the live show that you liked or had the most impact on?
More than with the biggest or most media name, we are left with those who transform the way of understanding the stage. It is difficult to choose one because the memory of the live changes depending on what you need to learn at each stage. From some you learn the scale and from others the truth. Furthermore, when you have to open a concert for New Model Army, Fields of the Nephilim, Gitane Demone, Spin Doctors, Texas, Gun, Héroes del Silencio, Gabinete, etc., etc., they require you to raise your own level. And those live shows make us see the priceless work of the group that opens the fire before an audience that is waiting to see the main group.

“Sueños en blanco y negro” (92), your first album, continues to be one of the peaks of Spanish alternative rock with dark atmospheres. Do you think justice has been done to him?
“Sueños en blanco y negro” is not only our first album: it is the portrait of a decade and an intense way of living and feeling, which set a trend when we recorded it. It remains one of the pinnacles of the alternative underground because it was not born from a formula, but from the need to give shape to our dreams and our love for music and poetry. And there are the influences of everything we liked since we listened to Velvet or Bowie or read Baudelaire or Rimbaud. Time has given it an aura, a very timeless spark, and that only happens with the best albums.
Justice is truly done by time and the people who continue singing those songs so many years later. That bond is indestructible and will survive when we leave the building.

There are still many groups –both national and international– from your generation active and battling against a current situation in which thousands of releases are accumulating. What motivates you most to continue creating music?
What moves us is the healthy obstinacy of knowing that, in a world in which everything is consumed instantly, what really lasts continues to be built with reflective slowness, physical dimension, resonance between those who create and those who listen, and some blessed artistic uselessness for giving shape to chaos. In this society of performance, of happiness forced by decree as a tool of domination, where everything is instantaneous production and consumption, creating rock is an act of intolerance against jerks and resistance against ageism that suggests that we should be feeding the pigeons in the park. We claim this blessed uselessness because it is liberating and, as Byung Chul Han suggests when talking about the disappearance of rituals and the value of the contemplative, we prefer to dedicate time to something whose only quantitative and qualitative performance is to move.

There has also been a certain return to dark sounds in recent years, some more post-punk and others more electronic. Why do you think these types of sounds are moving again among younger audiences?
It is not a mere nostalgic fashion, it is an aesthetic and necessary response to the times they are going through. Faced with an uncertain horizon saturated with that happiness and imposed positivity that I spoke of before, dark music offers a refuge of truthfulness. It does not disguise anguish, anxiety, depression, or OCD; It gives them a sound form, validates them and collectivizes them. A catharsis that turns individual disenchantment into a community epiphany. Mark Fisher already diagnosed a feeling of cancellation of the future among young people. Post-punk introduces a scratchy texture and a dissonance that is mandatory in the face of the impossibility of imagining something genuinely new.

How many songs from “Anatomy of a Cold Universe” do you plan to include in the setlist of the October presentation concerts?
All. Logic says that since it is the presentation of a new album, we have to play all of them, but we still play each and every one of the songs from all the previous albums and none from the new one. The absurdity of power.

Concert agenda: