El Toro De La Muerte - Dancer These Days EP Review

"I just did another review for The Brainless Horde and I liked the album a lot... I'll let ya'll know when it's up!

-Austin Lovelace"

 

 

 My first introduction to this band was four guys playing a last minuet show to fill time between two sets at the Colorado Springs Indy Music Awards (that's my guess given that the we'rent on the original schedule). For some reason they had decided to start playing an acoustic set so in my head I was watching a great folk rock band. As the cashier at The Leechepit informed me, I had not really seen this band live. IMPORTERS, I didn't see any of them scream once. It's always cool to see a band in a form that isn't what you expect, but if anyone else was there to see the same show you missed a 90s rock band, you should go and see them again and so should I.

These guys are some freak of nature built by Modest Mouse, Weezer, and The Shins like some kind of gene splicing mad man experiment. They're lost in an age that is now 12 years old. These guys clearly where their influences on their sleeves; each song is going to remind you of someone else but they do it so proudly that you've gotta love it. This is their first release and they already know their game, and they really don't care if you don't.

"BACK IN MY DAY, I COULD MOVE MY FEET WITH THE REST OF THEM", there really couldn't be a much clearer Pavement influence than on the track "Dancer", which despite the vocals screaming in your face, makes you want to get up and move. But you do it without punching someone, okay maybe, but you should, okay maybe, it depend on who, but you probably shouldn't, okay maybe.... It's hard to move through an EP when you have the first track on repeat. "Things In My Head" has one of the catchiest intros and the words are practicably coming out of Issac Brock's (of Modest Mouse) mouth, but it doesn't have the same energy until it's end, #punkfanproblems. The next three tracks bring the energy back full force and if the vocal melody of "The Chartering Rats", very Shinsy, doesn't get stuck in you're head you're just not human, nope get your gears checked you can't be human. "Animals" sounds a lot like an early Weezer track, especially when the exit riff starts playing at about 2:20min in. The last track of the album, probably my favorite, goes for a much softer approach. If Edge (of U2) conceived a kid during a conga line, you would get the chorus Riff on "Like a Ghost".

I have a feeling that everyone will be able to take these guys and put what ever label they want on them, and everyone should and will. However, what ever label you put on them wont affect that these guys are taking everything an making it their own. They give soft instrumentals a mosh worthy energy by screaming their faces off into your own. It should be clear by their name that Spanish music somehow or another makes its way into every song, and it's clear when they do. This album takes an extremely aggressive sound and makes you want to dance to it. On top of everything else they have a seance of being optimistic even when they are negative without beating you in the head with it.  If my first experience with this band live wasn't what it was, I picture the crowd split into two halves; one in a giant mosh pit and the other dancing through the whole show, me the former.

Being a part of The Brainless Horde has been my schooling on the city I live in. Discovering that Colorado Springs is cultural on a most basic level, which is contrary to my opinion of plain vanilla. It's bands just like this that I look out for SO KEEP IT UP "The Bull is Dead".



The Note Pad:

Other Bands You Might Like: Modest Mouse, Weezer, Pavement, Dinosaur Jr., Sugar, No Age, New Order, Joy Division, Mumrah, Radiohead, Green Day, The Replacements, Husker Du

Fav. Tracks: Dancer, The Chattering of Rats, Like a Ghost