Hijo de puta

After the joke that was Asspera's first album, Bizarra actitud de seguir con vida, many people got interest in the band, which led them to play some shows and quite quickly get an almost cult-like following of retards who laugh at the word "fart" and headbang to pretty much anything with a distorted guitar; I'm gonna be honest, back when I discovered this band I was like this, but I've grown out of it, unlike most of the people who really like Asspera. So, given that their first record reached various ears and was liked by many people (but not exactly me), they decided to go back to their home-studio to record Hijo de puta, which honestly, is a great improvement over the previous half-baked, generic album.

The album opens with what must be Asspera's most well-known song, "Hijo de puta", a fast groovy song with a simple riff and lyrics talking about a the day-to-day life of a character (presumably the band's vocalist), talking about how transsexuals are better at blowjobs, how they farted in an elevator, and other ludicrous stuff, and that's how far this album goes in terms of lyrics; farting, shitting, fucking, and maybe some political lyrics and a stupid song about song, and the completely unnecessary but obligatory song regarding paedophilia. The lyrics are somewhat better than before, they're not so stupid and maybe make a bit more of sense, but it's still stupid to sing "Go fuck yourself / By my disgrace it was great / for you to be fucked in the cross", on "Gambeta", referring to obviously, Jesus; these lyrics are on an edgy's 15-year old black metal solo project level, and they come from grown men trying to make people laugh, and spoiler, they don't (at least I didn't laugh... 95% of the time).

PS: I forgot to mention that if the joke in the last album was "el perro me mira", now it's "el mate sin azucar", which translates "the mate without sugar", mate being a traditional beverage in Argentina and other parts of southern South America, usually drank with (or without) sugar. There's somewhat of a war between those who like mate with sugar and those who don't. This new recurring line can be heard multiple times throughout the album, and guess what... ding! ding! ding!, you guessed it! it's not fucking funny!!!.

These silly, dumb, look-like-written-by-a-7-year-old lyrics are sung by Richar Asspero (haha, funny name, haha) in the same style as before, with a raspy, almost guttural voice, that becomes fucking annoying after 3 songs, mainly because his vocal tone is fucking terrible and he fails at delivering any other style of vocal except for a very occasional shitty attempt at a death metal growl. The rest of the band provides some backing vocals, which are even more ridiculous, since they are mostly high-pitched, falsetto vocals trying to sound funny (spoiler, THEY AREN'T FUNNY). I might be going a bit too harsh on all of this since this music isn't supposed to be very serious, just comedic, to make you burst a good laugh, but it's not working, they use and abuse stupid stuff trying to reach that comedic aspect but at the same time try to be serious about the music and everything else.

But, moving on, what matters here, over the shitty vocals and lyrics, are the riffs, the sweet riffs, the guitar work in the album... yeah, it kinda sucks: while all the songs are way heavier and better than the ones from the previous release, and there's a lot more variety in everything, they still sound somewhat terrible; I'm not sure if it's because the terrible guitar tone which sounds like a mix between blues rock tone and regular groove metal,, or if they suck because they suck. To be fair, while there are some really good riffs here and there, many songs are just chord progressions with some licks thrown in there, many of them bordering the nu/alternative metal side using arpeggios, augmented chords, full major chords that kinda sound off-key, and all that kind of stuff typical to alternative bands, and it's not too bad, but it's somewhat off-character since it doesn't fit too well the rest of the music.

At this point is very apparent that Asspera LOVES to put fillers in their albums, be them non-metal songs, covers, or random recordings during the recording sessions. This time, we've got 5 fillers: "Contra flor al mazo" is just some random shit, "Bombeado" is the band's vocalist barely playing a guitar and making weird noises in the microphone while the rest of the band laughs in the back; it lacks any context to be actually funny. Then, "Reverendo HDP" is a gospel-style song which talks about a pedo priest, "Un amor travieso" is a silly, dumb ballad, and lastly "El hijo de Cuca" is a cover of a cuarteto song. Maybe the last two are decent fillers which do carry some comedic value and make sense, but the rest are stupid.

To go finishing this review, I gotta talk about the rest of the instruments; they're decent, the drumming is good, it's worth nothing that this was Mario Lauro Santillan's (Geronimo Pastore) last recording before passing away due to cancer the same year this album was released. The bass is there, and it can barely be heard except in some very specific parts and/or songs, and nothing of what it plays it's worth noting.

The sound quality is good, the mix is well done, and all songs are well performed; let's not forget all of this was recorded in a home studio, so for it, I gotta congratulate the band's members, because this sounds fucking great.

Overall, this album is an improvement over Asspera's previous effort, it has better riffs, better songs, better lyrics, it's in every sense an improvement, but it's still not great, it's still fucking dumb, but I can't hate that much on it because once upon a time I really liked this album and I can sit through it (just barely, but I can), and I'm ok with hearing some of its individual tracks in a playlist, and I would sure as hell go see Asspera live and mosh to this, but it's still somewhat of a decent, above-mediocre effort, but far from being good.