WE COME IN PIECE, d3NdRONHappy-Fi, Mexico
Rating: 74
By Carlos Reyes
Hailing out of the Happy-Fi wing comes this relatively known band, d3NdRON’s electronic rock is making a lot of noise lately. Some of our friends have listed We Come in Piece as one of the year’s albums, too many and too abroad to ignore. On the surface and on initial listen, d3NdRON is not that all interesting, I mean, despite having an album that’s ultimately big of a party with collaborations from Niña Dioz, Pato Machete, Alejandro Rosso (Plastilina Mosh), not to mention Chajoe from Niña is the lead vocalist here and Pris from Quiero Club one of the band’s members. But among other surprises, d3NdRON reveals itself as the possible evolution of Northern Mexican rock electronics.
Although we don’t find them as revealing as the hype they’ve generated, they’re pretty comfortable and in control of their field. It’s like they got the tools, the ideas, and the ability to make their particular sound actually happen, but once fragmented (in songs) the transaction looses force, creating amazing musical passages but not necessarily amazing songs. This feeling omits “Mitras Anthem” because that’s one great piece, for its tricks and up-to-heaven configuration, plus getting the anthem sensitivity correct. It’s a homage to Mitras (a place in Monterrey) and the album dances around this idea, “somos la noche, el tiempo, el cielo, c’mon!” A truly wonderful gigantic song that almost makes the rest of the songs look bad.
I care very little about the subliminal junkie pieces (“Step Up”, “He Drove A White Rabbit” or “I’ll See You at the Gate”), they’re just too dreamy to function although I wouldn’t mind holding some of the stuff in them with me. In the other hand, I can hardly resist the aesthetics in something like “El Orden del Universo”, they go from dreamers to creators delivering the high edges. Like The XX, they deliver great beats and even great lyrics but it’s hard to keep up with them, there’s barely any order in them. In “AB Comando” (feat. Niña Dioz) they bounce into hip hop and ends up as one of the album’s peaks, plus that “let’s hear it for the dogs on the West Side … wof wof wof” liner is fantastic. There’s some polishing and rearranging to be done, but overall, this is quite impressive, they really pay justice to their “Carne Asada ‘til the morning light” premise.