Angelus Apatrida: Tasting The Rainbow

ANGELUS APATRIDA may not be the first band that springs to mind when you think of the new wave of thrash metal that made its presence felt at the dawn of the 2000s but they have been blazing their own impressive trail ever since their inception, becoming one of the most consistent bands in their field. They were just sinking their teeth into a string of tour dates when the pandemic struck and their plans were thrown out of the window. Rather than treat this as a negative frontman Guillermo Izquierdo took this obstacle in his stride.

“We were touring in support of our previous album Cabaret de la Guillotine and we had a lot more touring planned but this was stopped due to the pandemic. It may have been cut short but we learned a lot from this experience, learning from the bands we were touring with and gained a lot of improvement in our technique. We grew up a lot whilst out on the road. We brought all of this experience into the rehearsal room and started composing for the new album, putting these new skills into the music to try and make something new and exciting,” he explains. “We’re a simple thrash crossover band so everything we’ve done has already effectively been invented but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to try something new and push ourselves. We found ourselves with all this extra energy and anger at the world so wanted to put it to good use. It was an interesting experience writing, recording and producing an album during a global pandemic but it has allowed us to add all these situations and experiences during the last year into this album.”

The Spaniards had not initially planned to start working on a new album as their schedule was packed with touring. They had pieced some tracks together which were penned to be used as part of a shorter EP style release but due to their touring being shelved they decided to knuckle down and use their time wisely. “You can expect a lot of aggression and angry songs and a lot of musical violence. It’s definitely our most angry album so far and it’s something we’re really proud of,” explains Guillermo.

“With not being able to leave home for long periods it gave us all a lot of time to think about our lives, what is going to happen with our jobs, what is going to happen in the future. My father and mother are old and this situation could put them in danger and my girlfriend is a nurse who is working at a hospital in the intensive care unit so she has had to go through a lot of shit and has had to watch people dying every day so these feelings and emotions spilled out into the new album, not only with the lyrics but with the music. I prefer to write and record alone as I can sit back, relax, have a few beers or a bottle of wine and just start composing and it’s a lot of fun, I love those moments. Once I get a rough idea I can bounce it back and forth with the guys and we can build on it from there and this is the way we’re comfortable with. In the past we did all get together and booked a studio for a month or so but the last two albums have been recorded at home and to me it’s much easier and less stressful. I also prefer to record vocals on my own too as it can be quite a time consuming process. I work a lot on my pronunciation to make sure everything is perfect.”

ANGELUS APATRIDA reached the milestone of 20 years as a band in 2020 and whilst they may not have been able to celebrate this in the way that they anticipated they had a pretty special idea in mind to commemorate this accomplishment. “We hadn’t really thought of what the title for the album was going to be until Gyula, the artist who designed the cover artwork approached us and asked and we were like ‘wow, good question! Nobody has thought of that yet’. Due to the circumstances the album was recorded in we kind of felt it was appropriate to go with a self-titled release as it was almost like a new beginning or like a significant checkpoint in our career.”

“It was also another landmark for us as we decided to change it up this time round. We’ve used the same tuning for 19 years and have been comfortable with this approach but during the boring months and boring days of the pandemic we decided to try different things and tune down half a step. We had already written a couple of songs but we weren’t sure of the direction we were heading in but as soon as I started to play a new song which I believe turned out to be Indocrinate in the new tuning it just sounded so fucking different. It sounded deeper and more powerful and I was like ‘wow, I love this!’. I called David, our other guitar player and told him to give it a try and he was in complete agreement with me so we thought let’s do it! It’s not a huge difference but I feel people will notice the difference and we still have the ability to chop and change as we see fit. It had opened up a new level of opportunities for us and that’s great after 20 years of composing music. It’s almost like we just discovered a new rainbow of sound and our riffs are filled with electricity.”

Angelus Apatrida is out now via Century Media Records.

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