Ultimo Resorte Album Reviews

Ultimo Resorte – La Larga Sombra Del Punk (LP)

Which means: Last resort – The long shadow of punk!

Once again, I’ll make it very clear: personally, I don’t like Hardcore Punk!!!!

But I don’t doubt the importance of this band, because Ultimo Resorte was the bridge between the very first Spanish punk generation and the first Spanish hardcore wave. During their five years of existence (1979-1984), they only managed to record one demo and two unobtainable records. In other words, a 7-track self-titled EP and “Una Causa Sin Fondo”, a 5-track 12-track. La Larga Sombra Del Punk’ compiles these two discs along with a 16-page booklet in Spanish, featuring a lengthy interview with the band and tons of photos and fanzine clippings.

Musically, they fall somewhere between the more aggressive parts of Vice Squad, Discharge, Electric Deads or even Siouxsie and the Banshees. Silvia Resorte’s voice became their trademark, always backed by a band trying to figure out what hardcore was, and a synthesizer that created a chilly atmosphere on most of their songs.

This founding band hails from Barcelona, and you can feel it in the sense of desperation that emanates from their songs. The lyrics are imbued with an adolescent angst that only bands from the early ’80s could write. Along with Rip, Kangrena, Anti-Dogmatikss, Vulpess, Desechables and Larsen, this band helped put Spain on the international punk map at the time.

160 copies of the original pressing were issued on red vinyl with an OBI strip.

I didn’t listen to these tracks much. I quickly became bored with them, and despite the respect I have for artists and creation, I never bought this LP. I downloaded them, listened to them two or three times, then threw them in the garbage can.
It’s too aggressive, too dissonant, too shrill, too fast… you name it! In fact, everything I love about punk has been exaggerated tenfold, and that’s where I lose all the fun.

On the other hand, I loved the album that came out ten years after the band split up, because it features the old tracks, so the old days when Ultimo Resorte was a punk band as I like them.

“Ultimo Resorte – Post mortem” (1994)

You can feel the Ramones influence in the first song.

Nothing had been released since 1983… and this album was released posthumously, ten years after the band disbanded in 1984.

I appreciate the band’s beginnings much more when they were really Punk and not Punk Hardcore.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the following: “On the front cover is a photograph of the Último Resorte singer taken at one of the band’s concerts in the Basque Country in 1983, at a time when she was left with a trunk exposed beneath the bondage mesh shirt. On the back cover, apart from the song titles, there’s a photograph of the audience at the Oñate festival in April of the same year.

The album was accompanied by a booklet containing song lyrics, numerous photos of the band from different eras and formations, press clippings with album and concert reviews, flyers and concert posters, and a biography of the band by singer Silvia Escario.

The LP represents the only published document that gives an insight into the band’s sound in their early years (1979-1981), with a much more pop punk style than they later displayed in their 1982 and 1983 releases, affected by developments in the punk sound in the UK or the USA. Here, you can hear punk with roots in the 1977 sound of bands like The Rezillos, The Vibrators, B-52’s or the French Dogs. Suffice it to point out that the guitarist, Choli, plays without using a distortion pedal, which doesn’t stop him from extracting aggressive, edgy sounds from the instrument.” Excellent guitarist, by the way!

There’s also a bit of Ska and Oï Oï Oï! And backing vocals are always welcome.

As much as I didn’t really listen to La Larga Sombra Del Punk and even threw it away, I love the tracks on this album. But I have total respect for the band that brought hardcore punk to Spain.

In France, we had the fabulous Stinky Toys at the time.

After that, Ultimo Resorte isn’t one of my favorite bands in the genre, either, thanks to this album. The British and Americans largely took the lead, created the essentials and influenced those who followed. Killer Barbies is one of my favorite Spanish bands in the alternative world… especially when she sings in her mother tongue.