Uncompromising, artistically visionary, and technically adept: The high energy Rock & Roll of the Swiss quartet is versatile – and utterly powerful. This can also be heard on the third album ‘Mount Angeles’, which is out now via Taxi Gauche Records!
Knowing themselves since their teenage years, they have learned the rules of Rock & Roll from the very beginning: Altin Asllani, Fabio Schoeni, Flavio Scano and Jan Jossi – four friends from Zurich with Swiss, Albanian, Brazilian and Italian roots, who have been sharing an ardent passion for music for more than a decade. With their third album “Mount Angeles” they are now setting out to conquer all Rock enthusiasts beyond their country’s borders.
Their mutual love and enthusiasm for the Rock music of the 70’s speaks to style-defining bands such as Deep Purple, Frank Zappa and all the progressive rock pioneers. The eleven new tracks off their third album “Mount Angeles” show an inspiration from 90s brit pop bands such as Kula Shaker and Oasis, which in turn were influenced by the mother of all bands: The Beatles. The Liverpool pop gurus had a considerable influence on the material from “Mount Angeles” as bassist Fabio Schoeni explains: “One night after a few drinks at our favourite bar, Altin and Flavio made a bet that they can play every single Beatles song there is. So it happened that we played a Beatles album there each month, in chronological order and in a wide variety of line-ups, until Covid put it to a temporary stop at the tenth show.”
Inevitably, rehearsing that many Beatles songs has had an impact on their new songs that Pablo Infernal started writing in fall/winter 2019.
For years, the band’s first choice for retreating and letting the artistic urge flow freely has been a 19th century house in the middle of the Swiss Alps, called Gasthaus Gruenenwald. The former train station and inn situated in Engelberg (which means nothing else than “angel mountain” in German, hence the album name), has become an essential part of the group’s songwriting process. “It was during the first week of song writing for the new album, when we made the decision to record it live at this place of power”, reveals Fabio, “When we went there again for two weeks in June 2020, we had to be content with very simple means to record. We only had a simple interface and some good studio microphones from our producer Philip Harrison. The drums were set up in the rustic wooden dining room, the bass amplifier in the kitchen and the guitar amps in the garage. Except for the vocals, we recorded the entire album playing together in the dining room – live!” And once again it shows that it pays off to work as a team. Without exceptions, Pablo Infernal create all their songs together in the same room. Therefore, the band functions as a well-oiled engine, which allowed them to record most of the songs with only a few takes. “Though I must admit, with ‘Kung Fusion’ we didn’t manage to get the perfect take until late at night – we’d all had a drink or two by then. You can still hear the screams of joy at the end of the song, when we finally nailed it after countless tries”, states Fabio laughing.
Mixed by none other than five-time Grammy Award winner Chris Lord-Alge from Los Angeles (Aerosmith, Muse, Foo Fighters, Green Day and many more) and finalised by Bill Skibbe at Jack White’s Third Man Mastering Studio in Detroit, “Mount Angeles” presents the preliminary zenith of Pablo Infernal’s work. From the powerful opening blow “Champagne Killer” to the dirty garage psych track “Bend Your Strings” and a progressive double track “Past Present” / “Present Future” up to the signature track and absolute rock anthem “Simple Things” that oscillates between all influences of the band. “Mount Angeles” offers a wide range of colours, sounds and reminiscences to rock and pop music. A mixture that is deeply connected to the past of rock music while also reflecting to what the future of it might look like. A future that could hold Pablo Infernal as a serious player in the Rock game.
Stream: https://ditto.fm/mount-angeles
CD & Vinyl: https://taxigauche.com/shop/