Review by Daniel for Baron Rojo - Volumen brutal (1982)
With the European metal scene starting to heat up in the early 1980's, it was only a matter of time until we’d start to see metal bands popping up from countries like Spain with this particular release representing not only the first metal-related release to come out of the country but also the most celebrated one still to this day.
Baron Rojo (which is Spanish for Red Baron) started as a four-piece hard rock outfit formed around the twin guitar attack of Armando & Carlos de Castro in Madrid in 1980. They released their debut album “Larga vida al Rock and Roll” the following year with reasonable success however it was Baron Rojo’s follow-up album “Volumen brutal” that saw the band toughening their sound up a little & also reaching a greater level of commercial & critical success. In fact, I’ve even read that Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich once placed “Volumen brutal” in his all-time top ten metal albums so they were really going great guns at this stage & as soon as the album first graces your ear drums it’s pretty clear that Baron Rojo were a class act. It’s also notable that on the original release of “Volumen brutal” all of vocalist Armando de Castro’’s lyrics were sung in Spanish which is clearly a career limiter however the band made the intelligent decision to release an English version ten months later in December 1982 & that was just the ticket to further enhance their sales figures with over two million copies of the album sold worldwide. Interestingly enough, the band engaged former Samson & new Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson to assist them with the translations but the Spanish version is probably the more prominent of the two releases & the one that I’m most familiar with so that’s the version I’ve chosen to review here.
The production job on “Volumen brutal” is excellent & it presents a band that clearly know what they’re doing in the studio. The same can be said for the instrumentation & performances as all band members are right on top of their game. The twin guitar attack & the use of guitar harmonies is excellent throughout the album which is no surprise given that the two guitarists are brothers.
Now this might all sound pretty positive so far however I’m about to turn that around as I have a fairly big problem with “Volumen brutal” i.e. the vocals of Armando de Castro really annoy me. I don’t think that the Spanish language translates well with the band’s sound & it makes the vocal delivery sound a bit more cheesy & light-weight than it might otherwise have done. Plus, I don’t think that Armando was an amazing vocal talent anyway so when you throw in some fairly flat vocal hooks on some of these tracks you get an album that shows great instrumental promise but falls flat due to the lack of a quality vocal delivery. To be honest, Baron Rojo’s sound on "Volumen brutal" doesn’t seem particularly metal to me either. They seem to be more of a quality hard rock outfit with heavy metal elements to my ears. There’s really only one genuine metal song with another couple sitting somewhere between metal & hard rock in my opinion. I’d suggest that they were influenced by bands like AC/DC, Scorpions & Deep Purple with some NWOBHM influence thrown in there as well so they have a solid enough pedigree if not a particularly metal one.
The high praise that I see floating around on the internet would indicate that I might be on my own in not rating the album too highly but if you've read a reasonable number of my other reviews I’m sure that you’re already aware that I call ‘em like I see ‘em. I simply don't feel the urge to return to "Volumen brutal" & as a result it would hypocritical of me to recommend it.