Holocausto ~ USA ~ Puerto Rico

Aleluya (1974)

Holocausto were an obscure Christian band from Puerto Rico who released this one very intriguing album. At times, there are bursts of complex and heavy Italian styled prog with guitars and keyboards raging over the crazy rhythms. At others, there's a bit of machismo Latin soul rock, that is obviously more song based. Overall, it reminds me somewhat of the Peruvian band Tarkus. It's a very rough recording, but the reckless abandon of youthful exuberance takes this one up a notch. Apparently the band had started to work on a remix for a possible reissue, but no recent word has surfaced that I could find anyway. I could see this easily going up a half point or more with repeated listens. 

This is another late era submission from The AC.  His notes to me were: "This Christian-themed underground Latin American rarity is an interesting blend of progressive, psychedelic, hard rock/proto metal and latin rock styles.  Heavy riffing, organ/keys, flute/sax and impassioned vocals battle it out over a set of relatively concise but atmospheric and thoughtfully constructed tracks, where the undeniably cool "aura" of the whole thing helps to make up for the somewhat primitive execution. Great cover art as well (both front and back). However, the sound here could really use a good cleaning up, as it's hard to even hear some of the more interesting instrumental details at times. It seems the band themselves were working on doing just that a few years back, but I'm not sure if this is still an ongoing effort. Lets hope so, because this one is definitely worth it."

11/3/15 (review); 9/12/16 (new entry)