Bizarra actitud de seguir con vida

I first heard of Asspera in like 2014 or around that time; there was this Youtuber who would do humorous cooking videos and he would always open and close his videos with some song by this band, and one day I decided to finally check them out; at first, I really liked them, they had some nice riffs and they lyrics were funny... That was when I was 11 years old or so though, and my opinion has greatly changed since then, so they went from being one of my favourite bands to being somewhat of a thing I don't enjoy hearing too much. I've decided to finally sit down and write my thoughts on Asspera's first album, so here it goes:

The first two things to point out, and the main drives of this band, are its lyrics and vocals. I tend to start my reviews by explaining the guitar riffs and stuff, but in this case I just gotta get to this first because it's basically the focal point of this band and what differentiates it from all the other bands. I've always found people who criticize Asspera because of the vocalist trying to "imitate" Almafuerte's vocalist Ricardo Iorio, and even though the vocals are raspy and low as those of Iorio's, I don't think there's any actual attempt at copying any other singer, but this is the most "funny" voice the vocalist of this band could come up with, I guess*; it's fun at first to hear him sing like this, but it really gets tiring overtime, as he only uses this raspy voice to sing and sometimes might do some terrible growls, but nothing more than this; it's like hearing a car's motor throughout the entire album, and it becomes old after 3 songs.

* = The only song where he uses any sort of different voice is Gol de arsenal, where he tries to parody Axl Rose's or Brian Johnson's voice, but he fails to be funny while doing so, expectedly.

Regarding the lyrics, they intend to be funny, but actually they aren't more than stupid and vulgar jokes, making a lot of references to shitting, fucking, transexuals/transvestites, homosexuality, and some occasional racism and misogyny, as well as talking about paedophilia in some songs. These lyrics are fun at some extent, and you might crack a laugh the first three or four times you hear the songs, but then it just becomes sheer childish stupidity and a bunch of grown men trying to be funny but failing miserably, there's a point where you stop laughing with the lyrics and laugh at the lyrics instead. The only thing I'll praise from these lyrics is how, ummh, poetic they can be at times, at least there's some sort of thought put on them and it's not just a bunch of funny words being thrown together (well, sometimes it is actually).

PS: There's also this stupid joke that you can hear like 2 or 3 times throughout the album which is "El perro me mira" ("The dog stares at me"). I don't understand it, they've also repeated it numerous times in future releases, but there isn't any apparent meaning to this joke, which leads me to believe it's an inside joke that only they understand. It's probably funny given it's out of context, but just once, it's not funny after that.

Now, moving on, let's focus on the actual music: the guitar... Well, they aren't too good actually, I mean, some of the riffs are somewhat decent, but they aren't too original or too interesting, but more like generic, like those you'll hear from any random band playing one night in some underground gig you attended to and you never saw them again because they probably disbanded. Apart from the main riffs, that are kind of repetitive and very similar throughout the songs, the only thing you'll hear most of the time, specially during the verses and the choruses, are palm-muted chord progressions with some occasional, rather simple riffing, and power chords. One thing that can be somewhat noticed in these songs is a clear blues rock and a "rolinga rock"* influence, it's quite obvious, at least for me, but it doesn't add anything to the album, I'd even say it takes something away from the album, because all the songs sound alike, both in its riffing, vocals and tempos.

* = Rolinga rock is also known as "rock barrial" or "rocanrol"; it's a rock genre very similar to blues rock, born during the late 80s, but it takes almost all of its influence from The Rolling Stones, and some from other similar acts such as The Who. It was very popular during the 90s and 2000s in the country, but as since died down although there are many popular bands of this genre still playing and being formed. It had a huge impact in Argentinean musical culture.

PS: Another thing that I should note about the music in this album is that there are a lot of different audios being played over certain part of the songs, like some spoken words referencing something idiotic, laughs, and other kind of stuff to had to the overall weirdness of these compositions. There's also some backing vocals from the rest of the band members and some edited vocal tracks with changed pitches, reverb, and other effects which can be heard in some songs.

I should note that this album might be 44 minutes long and have 15 tracks, but actually like half of the album are actual metal songs: Bizarra actitud de seguir con vida is just a 21-second track with a lot of laughs. El paisano is some weird church music-style thing which intends to be funny while talking about drugs (but guess what, it's actually not), and it just ruins the mood of the albums; it does retain the "comedy" this work tries to present to its listener, but if you're here for the riffs, and specially if you don't speak Spanish in order to understand the lyrics, you're just going to wonder what the fuck is that shit doing here. La bruja borracha is just another really stupid short track, which resembles some recordings of missed phone calls. Me gustás mucho and Violeta are just metal covers of two well-known rock and cuarteto songs respectively. Then, Gol de arsenal is a rolinga rock song with some metal riffing; while it's mostly a parody, it again fails to be funny and it just ruins the mood of the release. Lastly Pajero viejo is a romantic-sounding ballad, but its lyrics are more anti-romantic than anything, as they describe and joke about a degenerate, paedophile old man who's addicted to sex, and it does it in a certainly graphic and gruesome way, but there's no metal in it at all. That leaves us with just 8 original metal songs, which could (and probably should) have been the entirety of the album, instead of having 7 tracks which are pretty much fillers.

Over all of this, there's also some "comedic" rip-offs in various of this songs. The most obvious one is in Violeta, where the song opens with the riff from Run to the Hills by Iron Maiden; once again, it's just a silly attempt at comedy which can probably make you chuckle at first, but then it becomes stupid. I've heard many say that Asspera's riffs are mostly stolen, or they at least are pretty similar to those of other bands, and to be honest, I do agree with these people, since many of the riffs you can hear in this release are very generic, and they sound just as riffs I've heard from a myriad of different bands across different genres. This doesn't mean that the riffs aren't good or enjoyable, but it means that if you've listened to enough music through your lifetime and then end up listening to this, you won't be impressed at all, since this album lacks of any character or originality when it comes to its songwriting.

Lastly, I should talk about the rest of the instruments and other minor things to note: The bass isn't audible actually, it does play alone at some parts of a couple of songs, but there's nothing else to it in the whole album, and the drums are somewhat good to be honest, but nothing out of this world, and to be fair, there's a lack of interesting beats to spice up the songs at some points; I would have thrown some half-tempo drums over some parts of some of these tracks to put some groove to the music and to hide the repetitiveness of the riffs, but this resource is barely used throughout this release, and when it is used, it's usually not in a way where it makes a difference.

Why am I giving this album a 60 out of 100 then? I'm just beating the shit out of it and pretty much making it look like a terrible release!. And the truth is, that this is in fact a bad album, in some sense of the word "bad", but it's somewhat digestible, it's not unhearable like some of the crap I've reviewed previously. I'd mosh to these songs, and I can make it through hearing one of them in a playlist, between other better songs, but once you sit down and make it through 44 minutes of terrible musical comedy, stupid lyrics, terrible vocals and repetitive riffs, it does get fucking boring. I feel like I'm giving this release this score based on its individual songs rather than in the combination of them all, and because at the end of the day, I'll possibly headbang to some of these songs, and I'd mosh (and fall on my own) to them in a live show, regardless of them being generic as fuck.

If you're into mock bands and bizarre music, you might like this and the rest of Asspera's stuff, but if you're looking for some actually enjoyable metal, with good riffs and enjoyable vocals, stay away from this release, and probably this band all together.