Toundra

Spanish post-rock outfit TOUNDRA are releasing their eighth studio album, 'Hex', on January 14th, 2022. Like many bands all across the globe, 2020 forced a new and unexpected reality upon the Madrid natives, who found their touring plans cut short last year, and would begin shifting their focus towards recording new material under unusual circumstances. Frequently traveling between Madrid and the Cantabrian Coast in the last year, the band would grow to embrace these uncomfortable conditions, and ultimately use them as inspiration to make a record unlike anything previously found in their catalog. Their newest effort, 'Hex', is decidedly an album that is divided into two sides. Side A will consist of a single, 22-minute-long track, titled "El Odio" (Hatred), and Side B is made up of four new tracks. "Ruinas" ("Ruins") is on a list of prototypical songs that Toundra creates at least once in each album. A song based totally on the energy and the melody; something that has been the hallmark throughout their career. "La Larga Marcha" ("The Long March"), however, is born from the influence of electronic music, with its own clear interpretation of what a loop played on a guitar is. "Watt" is the first song the four musicians put together in the room to start the composition of this album. The use of a saxophone draws inspiration from King Crimson, and that particular way they have to go from Western scales to those found in music from other parts of the world. The album ends with "Fin", an intended name to conclude an era in Toundra, the era of this album. Speaking about the 22-minute "El Odio", Esteban Giru00F3n from the band shares the deep introspection and "call to action" behind the track, saying: "I am thirty-four years old, and since I became an adult until relatively recently, I have lived in anger. Being angry at the world helped me to move forward in many areas of my life, and because of that, it became a necessity to be angry at the world. That state of mind suggests many things, such as a never-ending frustration from thinking that everything could have always been done better, for instance. I believed that being angry at the world was the only way to try to improve my surroundings and to improve the lives of those I love. All of this can take you very easily to really dark places. Life is too short to be angry. During the recording of this album, Macu00F3n approached me and showed me a video in which some unfortunate people climbed up to a balcony to steal a rainbow flag and then tore it apart. People below cheered and supported them. 'This is 2021', said the good old Maca with wide eyes. Finishing the recording of our umpteenth album, an event (the murder of a young man in A Coruña simply because of his sexual condition) brought us back to the topic that we wanted to reflect upon with an ambitious song that would illustrate how, since birth, human beings are struck by innumerable impulses that lead them to hate instead of love. Hate is not in the nature of any animal, not even in the nature of a human being. Life in this world of screens, numbers, and false justifications of mathematics, theories even more perverse than social Darwinism, denature the human being and lead them to hate whoever is next to them. I have never seen an animal hate and I have grown up among them. There are much better alternatives to hatred; I understand that now. And I can progress and grow more through love than by hating. Many of my best friends are having children, and when I see those kids, I always think, 'I hope you'll live happily in a better world than the one I believe we're leaving for you.' If we allow the fury of hatred, racism, intolerance to grow; if we tolerate it, then what we love most, our children, will be the ones suffering a life of slavery, intolerance, and fear. Because, just like that poster during the Spanish Civil War said in the face of intolerance, 'if we tolerate this, our children will be next.'"