Angelus Apatrida: Vultures And Butterflies
ANGELUS APATRIDA might be one of the best thrash bands you’ve never heard of. They’ve been active for over two decades, have an impressive, seven album back catalogue and built up a dedicated following, yet they’re largely unknown in most of the English-speaking metal world. This partly down to geography; they’re a chart-topping act in Spain, but the country’s metal scene tends to get overlooked in favour of other European nations. Unless you’ve done a deep dive into modern thrash or spent a weekend at Resurrection Fest, we’d bet good money they aren’t even on your radar.
But after many years of honing their craft, that’s finally starting to change and the outside world is taking notice. Their self-titled 2021 album saw their first ever chart entries in Germany and Switzerland and they’ve ventured over to the United States too. It’s a great record, but they may have eclipsed it with Aftermath, their brand new, eighth release. ANGELUS APATRIDA have put in the work and at last, it’s paying off.
So, despite having just flown back from a few shows in Columbia, singer/guitarist Guillermo Izquierdo is in an optimistic mood. He’d been home for mere minutes before talking to us and there’s not a trace of exhaustion. He’s full of confidence and there’s a refreshing lack of arrogance when he tells us about Aftermath.
“This may be the album that defines the band these days. If I had to put it in one sentence, it’s what metal means to us. We want to be the band that as fans, we would want to see. It’s why we’re making music, we’re trying to be our own favourite band! But in a very humble way,” he says. “It’s what ANGELUS APATRIDA is nowadays.”
Aftermath is an amalgamation of all that ANGELUS APATRIDA love and it’s worked out very well indeed. It’s ten songs of head-banging, pit-ready thrash but unlike some of their contemporaries, they’re not stuck in the past. Thrash metal is awesome, but bands do have a tendency to limit their influences to the original acts and don’t look past the glory days. There’s nothing wrong with that, but Guillermo and his bandmates would prefer to push at the boundaries and expand their chosen genre. He cites MEGADETH as one of his favourite artists, and there’s a Mustainian technicality in Aftermath, as well as several modern flourishes and even the faintest whisper of prog.
Second track Cold is over six minutes long and has several intricate sections that would make Total Guitar readers sit up and pay attention. To Whom It May Concern almost reaches the ten-minute mark and is an elaborate, multi-layered number. The closing Vultures And Butterflies is a sombre, sort-of-ballad with a spine-tingling cameo from QUEENSRŸCHE singer Todd La Torre. It’s arguably the best track on here, and Guillermo is noticeably proud of it.
“This was a piece that I got the idea for while writing the last album. I save all the riffs I come up with on my computer and 90% of them I never use again, but I went back to this one and started bringing more things together. It’s not a ballad, but it’s kinda a ballad? It’s a darker kind of ballad, it’s not a love song but it’s about a broken heart. It hits my heart in a dark way, the same feeling I got the first time I listened to Rust by BLACK LABEL SOCIETY. We wanted to put something special as the last song and we’ve got Todd La Torre on here and he sounds incredible.”
This is still thrash but make no mistake, this is not your father’s thrash metal. And it’s all because these four lads from La Mancha are constantly pushing one another.
“We always try to be better and not repeat ourselves. We don’t want to fall into a formula and just repeat You Are Next or Give ‘Em War or Sharpen The Guillotine, any of the songs,” Guillermo explains. “But our main influence was ourselves! We spent a lot of time playing together over the years and just got ideas from each other.”
There’s still a couple of old-school neck-wreckers on Aftermath. The opening song Scavenger has an old-school flavour with a satisfying modern crunch, while I Am Hatred seems destined to be a live favourite. The willingness to embrace the 21st Century though is their strongest feature and will hopefully see them break out beyond the borders of the Iberian Peninsula. Heck, they’ve even got a rapper on here.
“Sho Hai is a famous MC in Spain but he loves heavy metal,” Guillermo tells us. “We’ve talked about working together and wanted to have a similar sound as when PUBLIC ENEMY and ANTHRAX did Bring The Noise. But he can’t speak English, so we did his parts in Spanish and they’re really aggressive!”
The relationship between rap and metal has always been controversial, but thankfully, the song in question is very entertaining. What Kills Us All is rabble-rousing, aggro-metal that’s closer to BIOHAZARD than METHODS OF MAYHEM. Sho Hai’s Spanish lyrics and uncompromising delivery lend it an uncompromising authenticity. True, there’ll be a few metalheads who turn their noses up at it, but it may prove to be a left-field hit.
The gates to the world might finally be opening, but Guillermo is still a fan at heart. During our call, he talks about exchanging emails with an American festival promoter for a few days, then “having a fanboy moment” when he realised he’d been talking with Jamie Jasta of HATEBREED. And when we ask him what one piece of advice he’d give his younger self, he gives a thoroughly unexpected, self-deprecating answer: “Don’t call the band ANGELUS APATRIDA! People won’t understand it and anyone that can’t speak Spanish won’t know how to pronounce it.”
Aftermath is out now via Century Media Records.
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