Aural Aggravation

After a painfully long and undeliberate break, Toundra return from the isolation of their homes to present their new album Hex, which is set for release via InsideOutMusic on January 14th, 2022.

Toundra practically disappeared when the world stopped in March 2020. The outbreak of this global pandemic caught them loading their van to present their last reference in Europe so far: “Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari”. After presenting it in Madrid, Zaragoza and Barcelona, ​​on the same Monday that they returned to their daily jobs, the band decided to cancel their umpteenth European tour. Things looked bad. What happened next, we all know, and it is too hackneyed and serious a matter to be dealt with in a record press release.

Toundra returned to their homes. This time divided between the band’s native city of Madrid and the Cantabrian coast, where two of its members settled just before the squares and streets were empty. The distance and the difficult situation did not make them relax and sit by idly. If Toundra have shown one thing since their formation in 2007, it is the band’s hyperactivity and the need to keep moving forward, looking ahead and not at their shoelaces.

The band members bought the necessary equipment to be able to set up small and indecent studios in their homes and began to send ideas for new songs in a chaotic way at first. Without knowing very well where they were going or knowing very well what they might find. In the summer of 2020, the band began meeting in Madrid again to review the material that had been sent. The composition sessions were accompanied by constant talks about where to go with this eighth studio album (if we count “For those still living”, the album that was released by that side project called Exquirla).

The band states:

“Writing each new Toundra album means doing a job to find each other as a band. From our most innocent early days we have been self-righteous enough to take every step that we have taken as a band too seriously maybe. Every time we think about writing new albums we even suffer for it. This album means a job in which the four of us have rediscovered what we wanted to do without really knowing how we did it. The ideas were coming up in a chaotic way during the first months until little by little we saw how everything was being arranged in various notebooks and on the blackboard of our premises. Finally, the extreme cruelty that we can see around us (closer and closer) served as a catalyst to be able to give order to a lot of ideas, songs and, ultimately, to this new album. We are looking forward to finally presenting it to the fans now.

The composition work led them to finish the demos for their new album “HEX”, under the always faithful sight of Raúl Rodríguez, in May 2021. The next step was to trust Sati García again, who transferred them to Cal Pau studios again. (Vilafranca del Penedés, Barcelona) and Ultramarinos Costa Brava (Sant Feliu de Guixols, Girona) to record the seven cuts of this new album. Seven cuts that actually make up five songs. On July 30, 2021, the band obtained a new master’s degree and Mr. García could finally sleep peacefully. “HEX” will be released on January 14th, 2022 via InsideOutMusic. See the new album artwork here:

Today, “El Odio. Part I” is released as the first single from Toundra’s new album Hex. It is the first of three singles that will later form one long piece of music. For the video of “El odio. Parte I” the band collaborated with Asturian director Jorge Carbajales. Watch the video here:

AA