Argentine heavy psych rockers Humo del Cairo released their second album, Vol. II (review here), in 2011 through Estamos Felices. That was a pretty quick turnaround for the Buenos Aires three-piece then comprised of guitarist/vocalist Juan Manuel Díaz (who co-produced with Alejandro Ortiz), bassist Gustavo Bianchi and drummer Federico Castrogiovanni, who welcomed the latter into the band as they followed-up their 2007 self-titled debut (review here), which came out through MeteorCity in 2010.

And with that basic background in your pocket and perhaps the audio of iron-ic opener “Fe” lumbering out its warm fuzzy beginnings in your ears, I’ll tell you that when this record hit, I thought Humo del Cairo were at the vanguard of a new generation of South American heavy. The next Los Natas? It’d be a few records before anyone knew for sure, but the 11-song/49-minute Vol. II — I know it’s Vol. 2 on the Bandcamp player; I’m going by the cover art in using the Roman numeral styling — showed the potential was there in a dynamic and growing approach, able to create an atmosphere like “Fe” with its languid psychedelic unfurling, seeming to barely hold together but revealing the solid ground it’s been on the whole time at about three and a half minutes into its total five.

Like much of what follows, it is vibrant in its live energy but spacious in sound, and in addition to bringing ideas from some of what was happening in the European heavy underground at the time into the context of their own work — whether that’s the influence of the Elektrohasch oeuvre heard in the general tonal warmth, or the twisting progressive groove of “Espada de Sal” that reminds as much of Spain’s Viaje a 800 as earliest Queens of the Stone Age or Natas, they also tapped into the kind of thrust on “Crinas” that speaks in part to what Sasquatch have done in the years since, and more to the point, they did it organically.

You didn’t turn on Vol. II and land at the atmospheric pairing of “El Alba (Parte A)” and “El Alba (Parte B)” because Humo del Cairo sat down and mathematically pinpointed the route you’d take, but because it’s where the flow from “Fe” and “Los Ojos” and “Tierra del Rey” takes you. I don’t think it ever came out on vinyl (yet; never say never in a world of future-generation-reissue excavations), but there’s a definite shift in methodology right around “Monte” on the other end of “Crinas” and the “El Alba” sequel that brings a moment of hypnotic contemplation with “Monte” and while it’s probably “Crinas” that would start side B — it’s the centerpiece of the digital version, and fair enough for its nod and melody — before the drums at the start of “Espada de Sal” reorient the flow toward the cyclical rhythm of the toms and the vocals, which even as a non-Spanish-speaker have a grounding effect, and the later roll is revealed.

They don’t stick around in that one riff long enough to make it an answer back to the ultra-catchy “Tierra del Rey” earlier, which is also the longest song at 6:50 and the album’s most fervent stomp, but the noisy wash and effects with which they cap “Espada del Sal” reinforces the idea of the band doing more than one single thing in the material. That is, there’s plenty of riffs throughout Vol. II — and no fewer as “Parte del Leon” looses its own after “Espada de Sal” — but there’s more depth to the material than a sole focus on riffing can convey.

In the sun-coated openness of “El Alba (Parte A)” and the ahead-of-its-time heavy blues ambience of the penultimate “Descienden de los Cielos,” which is mostly instrumental and hits into a vibe that’s drawing from Hendrix but wouldn’t be out of place from All Them Witches in its swaying fluidity, vocals off and on mic, and generally dug-in feel, Vol. II argues decisively for variety in Humo del Cairo‘s style, and they finish with a suitable summary in “Indios,” which saunters through its early verses, chorus and solo and ends up nestled into a riff at about 3:45 where the chug takes hold, and I don’t know if it’s how it actually happened, but it sounds like the entire band decided right then to line up around that part. They dig into it and add some lead flourish and feedback, eventually a solo, but the drums are committed and the bass is on board, so Humo del Cairo end with the jam on a long fade and are all the more a success in doing so for the unpredictable course that brought them there.

This was the last Humo del Cairo record. They offered up a pair of EPs in 2014 and while there’s word from years back on their socials of a posthumous outing, Epilogo, and at one point they even posted a track from it called “En las Cumbres,” since removed from their Bandcamp, where Vol. II and the self-titled were recently added, but that’s gone by now. Díaz released a four-song EP from a solo-project dubbed Sanador in 2017 and were working on an album thereafter, but then Humo del Cairo started doing shows again in 2018, so I won’t profess to know what the situation is or was, what it might be in the future, if this band might ever do anything else or if they’re done permanently. And all that stuff, while relevant, is secondary to the work they did during the early 2010s, which I do think had an impact on South American heavy and could easily have reached beyond that if the gringo-world underground could step over about a two-inch language barrier and give what’s been crafted its due. Not holding my breath there, but crazier things have for sure come to pass.

I hope you enjoy listening. This was a band that came my way during the short-lived reboot of MeteorCity — CDs in gatefold digipaks from outfits like Humo del Cairo, Snail, Leeches of Lore, New Keepers of the Water Towers, Egypt and Valkyrie, among others — that petered out circa 2012 but still had a significant impact on the thread of rock throughout the decade and of course the trajectories of the bands in question. I have no doubt that if Humo del Cairo got a third LP together, they’d nail it. And in a universe of infinite possibility, it could happen.

Thanks for reading.

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Barring disaster between now and then, I and my family will spend next July 3 – Aug. 7 in and around Budapest, Hungary. You may or may not have seen I’ve mentioned a few times I’ve been taking language lessons — magyarul is a beautiful and hilariously complex language; if you’d take it on I hope you like suffixes — and it’s where my father’s side of my family emigrated from in the early 1900s. We’re not directly thinking of leaving the US now, but you never know and if I have a path to citizenship elsewhere, as it seems I do, then I want to pursue that as both principle and practicality. And probably at some point after I can express an idea so complex in the Hungarian language, I’ll actually begin what I understand is a years-long pursuit. Four weeks in town should help, but it’s a whole process, like everything.

It was a week. Things are hard enough that I barely did any substantive writing yesterday (the Mars Red Sky review was done Wednesday) and spent most of the morning and afternoon riding the Light Dragon in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which we’ve been playing as a family, harvesting shards of horns and scales and saving the acquisition of the Master Sword for The Pecan to do when she got home from school. Kid was stoked.

Which was a boon, because we’ve been in a pretty shitty spot the last couple weeks, and even as she seems to be making progress in school as regards hitting and all that, she comes home and absolutely wails on The Patient Mrs. and I. Sitting on the floor last night I got stomped on (on purpose) as she was on her way to the bathroom. She got distracted and didn’t make it, I yelled, she got there. Nobody felt good about anything. Half the time when it’s the three of us here I feel like I have to get up and leave the room. It’s not everything, and it’s not all the time, but when it’s been hard it’s been really fucking hard. And apparently the methylphenidate fucks with their sleep, so now she’s just awake and in our room all the time in the middle of the night and what the fuck did we spend six years hammering bedtime home for again?

A lot of things feel harder than they should. I’m burnt out. My patience is low. My general capacity is low. I have writing projects to do that I can’t get done. I can’t answer email. I lead an amazing life and have spent the last 30 fucking years miserable about it. Do you know how much time that is?

Monday I’m reviewing the Dopelord LP. Yeah, it’s late, but I had to allow a month’s extra time to compose the three sentences at the beginning of the post acknowledging the conflict of interest in reviewing an album I did the liner notes for when it was part of PostWax. Whatever. Next week also has new stuff from Warcoe — an album stream on Tuesday — a video premiere Wednesday from The Awesome Machine’s upcoming reissue on Ripple, and on Thursday an album stream for the ambient project Meditar, who are part of the sphere of Psychedelic Source Records (speaking of Hungary) and feature members of Pilot Voyager.

Did you stream the Mars Red Sky record yesterday? If so, I’d love your thoughts. I’ve sat with that record for a bit and gotten to know it, but I feel like the balance of familiar vs. new in the songs is right on and they’re bringing interesting ideas to the table. I don’t know. I like it.

It’ll be on the year-end list. When’s that happening? Either Tuesday Dec. 19 or the next day, I think. This weekend I’m working on another liner notes thing (as well as site stuff) and then will get the list set over the course of the week and start putting it all together. Biggest post of the year, every year. Takes a bit to build it up, but we’ll get there if years past are anything to go by.

And if you don’t remember, you can still check out the Best of 2022 and the Year-End Poll results that went up this past January, complete with all the lists that were sent in, just in case you’d like to fall down that rabbit hole for the entire day. It’s Friday. I offer a resounding “fuck it” in the direction of everything else.

Great and safe weekend. Have fun, hydrate, all that. See you Monday for that Dopelord review and more besides.

FRM.

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While it rested its strength in laid back desert atmospherics, the 2010 self-titled debut album from Buenos Aires rockers Humo del Cairo (review here) was more a show of potential than a distinguishing statement. It made the trio a band to watch. The quick-arriving follow-up, Vol. II (Estamos Felices), validates that anticipation. Humo del Cairo – guitarist/vocalist Juan Manuel Diaz, bassist Gustavo Bianchi and new drummer Federico Castrogiovanni – have stripped down their approach to the most necessary parts and presented a well-structured collection of songs that work as well individually as they do grouped together. It’s a rare balance, but Vol. II hits it, and where the self-titled had material that (purposefully) meandered into heavy jamming like the 11-minute “A Tiempo,” the longest song on Vol. II doesn’t quite hit seven minutes and is among the more direct and explicitly memorable riffs on the record. That the trio should be able to so quickly shift their approach between releases may or may not be a surprise – one never knows how long it’s been since the songs for the first record were written unless one asks, and I haven’t (yet) – but the confidence Humo del Cairo bring to their performance here and the sonic breadth they manage to cover while still maintaining relatively straightforward verse/chorus structures speaks to a distinct progression that’s admirable no matter the time span it happened over. Some bands don’t grow this much over the course of three albums, let alone one.

They operate in a variety of moods and still have wind up inevitably comparable to hometown stalwarts Los Natas at times, but by and large, Humo del Cairo’s riffing has gotten thicker and tighter. Diaz and Bianchi’s tones are rich on opening duo “Fe” and “Los Ojos,” and even later on the instrumental layering interlude “Monte,” they seem to retain a character of increasing individuality. If every album has a narrative to it – and most do – then that of Vol. II is one of Humo del Cairo beginning to come into their own stylistically. Heavy rock is at the core of every move they make, and they weave in and out of stonerly atmospheres, but Vol. II is striking in terms of the variety of mood it presents and how well the songs work together. There are 11 tracks, and each justifies its inclusion by standing out in one way or another, be it a particularly engaging riff, a memorable vocal melody (all the lyrics are in Spanish), or in the case of “Fe,” an overall largess of tone that sets the course for the album as a whole. Castrogiovanni distinguishes himself right away with a heavy thud amidst the formidable rumble of Bianchi’s bass, and Diaz places an echoing vocal far back in the mix initially, bringing it up toward the end as a setup for the more straight-ahead drive of “Los Ojos.” He’s almost certainly double-tracked his singing, but neither the vocals nor the music surrounding are lacking for a natural feel; the fuzz Humo del Cairo emit is as organic as one could possibly ask without sacrificing clarity.

As catchy and uptempo as “Los Ojos” is, with Castrogiovanni setting a “follow the bouncing ball” snare beat and sticking by it, it’s “Tierra del Rey” that serves as the first real highlight of Vol. II, and really, it’s all about the riff. Immediate stoner nod meets with rawer vocals and massive groove – a classic formula given new life by the fervency with which it’s executed. Diaz takes a guitar solo following the second verse, and that leads to a kind of mini-jam for the next minute-plus, but the main riff takes hold again and opens into as classic a part as there is within the genre of stoner rock. Subtle lead notes pepper an encompassing riff and Diaz meters his vocals to match the rhythm as Bianchi and Castrogiovanni lock down the march under the ensuing guitar solo. There are several genuine triumphs on Vol. II – among them the more ambient shift that “El Alba (parte A)” and “El Alba (parte B)” bring about immediately afterward – but “Tierra Del Rey” might be the most potent of them. The comedown that follows feels entirely earned, and the less distorted, higher-register notes of “El Alba (parte A)” both allow time to process “Tierra del Rey” and shift the focus to more atmospheric songwriting. The song picks up, riff-wise, and leads directly into “El Alba (parte B)” as the titles would suggest, but it seems reasonable that Humo del Cairo would split the whole into two component tracks, given how well the second of them stands up as a single, particularly in terms of its chorus. It’s more than a minute before Diaz comes in on vocals, but when he does, he brings appropriate gravity and layers of backups only further the character of the song, which is perhaps the most directly comparable to Los Natas’ melodic methodology as Vol. II gets until the heaviness is cut short and an acoustic guitar concludes the last minute and a half.

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At least according to the best translation Thee Googles has to offer, the second album from Argentinian heavy psych upstarts Humo del Cairo will be out Oct. 17. Their second album bears the appropriate title, Vol. II, and was recorded by Alejandro Ortiz (Carajo). No word as yet on whether or not MeteorCity will pick it up for a domestic American issue, but it’s out on Estamos Felices in time for Humo del Cairo‘s South American tour, about which you can find more info here.

The trio has posted the track “El Alba (Parte A + B)” on the Estamo Felices Soundcloud page in the meantime, and it shows some shifts from the first record. The sound is a little darker, the vocals a little lower. It should be interesting to hear how the whole record plays out when it lands. Here’s the stream of the track if you want to check it out: