Madrid-based rock band Electric Fence have released their fourth album Iron Surgery, giving us seven tracks of straight up, hard hitting rock ‘n’ roll.
The band comprises Jorge Coello (vocals), Edu Morales (bass/backing vocals), Sergio Gabaldón (guitar/backing vocals) and Luis Maldonado (drums/backing vocals). Electric Fence was born in 2002 in Madrid when a few childhood friends gathered to hang out, have some beers and play some music together. Coello joined around 10 years ago: ‘We met on Facebook, they were looking for a singer, I was looking for a band, and I did a casting and I was the chosen one!,’ he said. Of their name, he says: ‘They really loved The Hellacopters and that sort of thing, I think it comes from that. I heard the name the first time and thought: “This is promising, I want to sing in this band!” You know from the name that you’re going to be electrified!’
Iron Surgery pays homage to some of their heroes, including AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, The Cult, Black Sabbath and Danko Jones, with whom they have toured. ‘It’s an album that has been made over a very long time,’ Coello said. ‘Our last album, Motorkiller, was released in 2016. We worked on the new album through the pandemic, each song is like a calendar of the last eight to nine years. Sonically, it’s very eclectic – blues, soul, rock ‘n’ roll and metal – because we’re four different musicians with a lot of different influences that are all on this album. Motorkiller, for me, is like an introduction to the band, but this album is like our child (laughs).’
‘The lyrics are about a magician who wants to live for and from the music but he can’t, so he makes a pact with the devil’
‘The Devil’s Game’ is a huge opener, with its bluesey, sludgey riffs and licks and Coello’s big vocals, underpinned by a melodic chuggy bass riff: ‘We’re very proud of this song, our first attempt to make this song was completely different, it was slow, greasy blues, like the swamp! It became more angry. The lyrics are about a magician who wants to live for and from the music but he can’t, so he makes a pact with the devil (to allow him to do just that). In Spain, the music scene is very small, being a professional musician is very difficult. They want to pay you in beers but you can’t pay your rent in beers. My job is in cyber security. I was the typical nerd in school, if there was a writing contest, I was there! Often, the music comes first and then the lyrics, but it depends on how I feel. I have always sung in English, French and German in the choir at school. Then I started to sing in the school choir when I was 11, I’m 39 now.’
‘Sex, Beers, Rock & Roll’ is your quintessential rock song, encompassing all of those things. Such is its energy that it would be both a brilliant set opener and closer, building towards a squealey, fiery guitar solo around 2.20 minutes in, which cements it as a rock ‘n’ roll song to reckon with: ‘I go to a bar called El Boliche in my neighbourhood and have a few pints, they have Belgian, German and English beers. I go and drink and sing with my friends and my wife, that’s where the song comes from,’ he said.
The fiery guitar solo in question was written by Gabaldón: ‘I think he’s one of the best guitarists we have in Spain right now,’ Coello said enthusiastically. ‘He started playing the guitar very young. He met Edu at uni. I was studying history in the same faculty at the same time, they were a couple of years ahead, and wanted to become archeologists. Edu actually did become one! Sergio is very improvisational. He always has the basic structure for the solo and then he just starts playing. When we play live, his solos are always different every time, I think that’s one reason why people love our shows – they’re never the same twice.’
‘When we do a gig, suddenly a former member appears and comes up on stage and plays with us’
The striking artwork for the album depicts a man’s head with part of the skull cut away to reveal a red layer of mechanical cogs and wheels: ‘The artwork was made by Juan Astasio, he used to be in the band. He now works at The New Yorker as an illustrator. He played guitar at our last gig! We’re like a little family, the old members, we all love each other. When we do a gig, suddenly a former member appears and comes up on stage and plays with us. It happens at almost every concert, it’s happened at the last three in a row!’
Coello’s musical heritage is a rich and varied one, growing up on The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Bee Gees ‘and a lot of soul’: ‘My parents really loved music, people like Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye,’ he said. ‘I love music because of my parents. I really love old music. I also love Pennywise (a Californian punk rock band). I played a German festival with another band I was in, it was a year before I become a member of Electric Fence, in 2013. I was taking a beer backstage and talking with them. It was like taking a beer with my friends, it was very nice. Some of my favourite bands singing in Spanish are King Sapo, Los Zigarros, Sex Museum, Carlos Tarque and Morgan.’
The title track – and closer – ‘Iron Surgery’ turns out to have a very personal provenance. It starts off slowly, with almost imperceptible vocals, before the song erupts into a frenzy of guitars. Around the middle, they dial it right back to a quiet instrumental section, you’re not sure where it’s going, but then it comes back guns blazing, with infectious conga drums, taking it somewhere dancier and bluesier as they rev up the wah on the guitars: ‘Sergio had belly surgery, he wrote the music and lyrics of the first part, which has this classic Sabbath vibe and energy with the heavy riff and the ominous lyrics, but we sort of reached a point where you struggle to make the song work as a whole so you end up putting it aside,’ he said. ‘Eventually, Luis came up with this slow bass riff part which then leads to the psych-solos part, and we decided to give it a try as a part for the song, and as soon as we played it all together we instantly knew we had a winner. It all then developed from there to the point of recording some latin percussion, I love that psych-latin-Santana thing… I can feel the influence of ‘Black Magic Woman’ in this song, it has that kind of groove… hey, we’re Spanish after all!’
‘I made a friend in the choir and we did acapella R&B music, I was even in a metal band!’
I say that, for me, this is the track that best showcases what his voice is capable off, switching it up from heavy to psych rock, dotted with blues and metal-like screams and back again in a way that sounds entirely natural and he laughs: ‘The goal is to make it seem effortless but it’s really not effortless, it involves a lot of effort! I started off with singing masses at Catholic school, and then, at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, we sang choir baroque music. I made a friend in the choir and we did acapella R&B music, I was even in a metal band! I did a lot of things because I love so much music – salsa, funk, rock ‘n’ roll. it doesn’t matter to me what the genre is, a good song is a good song. Choir taught me how to breathe. The choirmaster would say “Give me that note. No, not THAT note!” The first month there, I didn’t sing at all, I just listened and learned.’
Coello also took it one step further, going on to have singing lessons with renowned flamenco and funk singer Celia Mur, who studied at Berkeley, from 2010 until 2013: ‘She was awesome, she died of cancer five years ago,’ he said. ‘When I met her, I knew how to sing lyrics and choir music but wasn’t so good at singing rock ‘n’ roll (laughs). I wanted to learn how to sing more aggressively, and she taught me that. She taught me how to “use” the air on my voice to create a more aggressive sound without hurting my vocal chords. We liked each other from the first time. She introduced me to Dean Bowman, former singer of the Screaming Headless Torsos.’
If he could go for a pint with any musician, Coello picks Michael Jackson: ‘I remember, I have a memory from when I was seven years old, going with my aunt to the supermarket and she bought a copy of Dangerous (1991). She put it on the record player and I was like “Oh my god!” I learned all the songs, he was one of the first singers that I sang along to. I remember the day he died (25 June 2009), I had a radio alarm clock and the first thing I heard that day was that he was died. The day that Robert Plant dies will be a very sad day for me. One of the most beautiful things about music is that you can connect with it, that’s what makes music art. I was in the car with a friend recently and ‘Firestarter’ came on by The Prodigy and she said “Oh, that takes me back to being 20”, it helps that we were a little bit drunk (laughs). But that’s what music does, it takes you back to that moment, you’re 15 again!’
(Top photo from left to right: Edu, Jorge, Sergio and Luis.)
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