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Iconoclasta — Orden en el Caos
(Azafrán Media AP2553, 2025, CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-05-26

Orden en el Caos Cover art

Iconoclasta has always been one of the best progressive rock bands from Mexico City, going all the way back to their early 80s debut, and over the years there has been a lot of turnover in the ranks. Originally a quintet, the membership changed over the years — sometimes they were a quartet, as they were on 2013’s Movilidad, then in December 2015 all the original members got back together for a 35th anniversary concert, documented in the epic double CD release Concierto de Aniversario 35 Años from 2022 — and we were led to believe that was the band’s final call. Until it wasn’t. In 2023 the duo of multi-instrumentalist Ricardo Moreno and bassist Greta Romero released a new album, Alter Ego, and today, a couple years on, Iconoclasta is now the solo project of Moreno, who plays guitars, bass, keyboards and percussion, helped only by singer Luis Arturo Castellanos on the album’s only proper vocal track. Does that make Orden en el Caos any less of an Iconoclasta album? Certainly not!  Moreno has always been the core of the band’s creativity and primary composer, and that brilliance shows through here on every one of the album’s fourteen tracks. The compositions are powerful, interesting, and influenced by all the band has done in the past, informed by Mexican folk and European classical ideals, and with a couple notable exceptions, entirely instrumental (“Canto Primitivo al Lobo” has some sampled voices and howling, but only “Francotirador” has Spanish lyrics). Moreno plays guitars, bass, and keys with powerful assuredness; if there is any weakness here it’s on the busier songs that use programmed drums where the fills don’t sound like a real drummer at all, but a machine. If those busy robotic fills had been left out, the songs that employ them would have sounded far more natural. Still, that only refers to a fraction of what’s here, and there are so many potent musical ideas presented, with beautiful melodies, gritty and powerful guitar solos (both acoustic and electric), that I have to say that Orden en el Caos stands unique among Iconoclasta’s many recordings.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Iconoclasta

More info
http://youtu.be/X8jgnE_vw50?si=CYWYDWYjsAstn9zW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK6lNJZuYck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwyMnUUzrf4

 

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