Zarpa - Los Cuatro Jinetes Del Apocalipsis (Spain 1978)

"Geeze, will you look at that cover?? A gory painting of a severed, hairy hand, dripping blood with hanging sinews and jutting bone, clawing at a wall. For 1978, when this album was first released, that had to be considered pretty extreme! It would be at least another ten years before the likes of Cannibal Corpse would make such "shocking" images commonplace on album covers. So perhaps it will come as no surprise that apparently this band went on to become an important part of the '80s heavy metal scene in their native Spain. But this debut album of theirs, recorded when the guys in the band were in their mid-teens (!), actually harks back more to the proto-metal heaviness of the early '70s and even '60s, to which we say, right on! It's fuzzed-out, garagey psych, tons of fierce, heavy acid rock guitar, sounding something like Stray or Sir Lord Baltimore, or seventies Spanish older-brethren Tapiman and The Storm. The first three tracks are all vicious stormers. Really raw and riffy!! Tracks four and five mellow out just a bit, balancing the heaviness with more melody. They've got a balladic '60s psych pop element to 'em, but they definitely don't wimp out in the end. We've gotta say, wow. Apparently the original of this is an expensive, rare-ass record (some collectors, we're told, even doubted its existence) but thanks to this cd reissue it's alive and well and and bloody and clawing at the walls. Recommended to all proto-metal freaks." (buy it @ aquariusrecords)

"Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalípsis by Zarpa is definitely the rarest Spanish hard rock/metal album ever released. It appears on the top of want lists of heavy metal collectors worldwide and original copies are impossible to find (tough collectors in Spain even doubt its existence!) being even rarer than the first album by Spanish progsters, Atila! It was recorded by four young long-haired musicians from Mislata, Valencia, in a budget studio and in only one take and released in 1978 on a tiny private label. It's a conceptual album featuring five long tracks with raw in-your-face sound and production, over-charged fuzz & wah wah guitar, powerful vocals and studio effects, in a similar vein to other Spanish underground hard rock bands from the '70s like Tapiman. This is a must for any hard rock/metal/heavy psych afficionado, reissued for the first time and remastered from original master tapes, including a booklet with liner notes by Spanish heavy metal expert José Luis Granado and rare pictures from the archive of Vicente Feijoó, the original guitarist & vocalist from Zarpa." (buy it @ forcedexposure)

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