"discografia completa"
Year: 2001
Country: Spain
City: Zaragoza
Label: Outline
Format: CD
Tracks: 28
Time: 60 min.
Genre: rock
Style: Punk Hardcore
Uncompromising hardcore punk that evolved from rabid criticism to political engagement. Many were the bands that in the punk wave of the 80s launched into the practice of the sharpest and most extreme side of hardcore. Music built from guitars and basses fired at a thousand, unappealable, incontestable, before which it is only possible to let oneself be carried away by the created tide. IV Reich, a band from Zaragoza, was one of a long list that included bands such as the Basques R.I.P., Radical HC, or from Catalonia, one of the main centers of activity, G.R.B., L'Odi Social, Frenopaticss, Ultimo Resorte, Antidogmatikss...
This "maño" group was formed among friends who met in 1981 from frequenting the bars that were in the Moncasi street area. They also had a friend's shop as a place to meet and listen to records from England. It was there that they were introduced to the sounds of bands like the Sex Pistols, and began to adopt those intensities as their own style. They were Tomás –Cota– as singer, Pilar guitar, Juan Ramón –Juanra– as bassist and Isabel –Isa– on drums.
Her attitude, as defined by Pilar when she recalls the beginnings of the group, was to position herself against everything: "Our philosophy was very simple, we were in the denial phase, we were anti-everything, everything was shit." The group's anger is directed at the system in general, religion, the police. The attitude would radicalize against the army even more when the fatal accident with a military truck takes place, which ends the life of Juanra when she was doing her military service. For the group it is a real blow, which it wrests from a partner when they had just begun to get to know each other within the group. They would later dedicate the song “No to the army” to him. The group, as far as the formation is concerned, is remade with the entry of Juan Vicente –Juanvi– who is in charge of drums, passing Isa to bass.
As Pilar recounts in Silvia Escario's blog (Último Springe), Juanra's death "was a fat host for us, since no friend had ever died." A couple of years later they would participate in a tribute concert organized by the family in Olot, their town of origin, which brought together, in addition to the IV Reich, Decibelios, Excesos y Dandys. On their return to Barcelona from Olot, they suffered an accident when the car in which Juanvi, Pilar, Isa, Fray (singer of Decibelios) and some other concert partner were traveling left the road and managed to get into the trunk. "Without seatbelts, all quite cooked, so many in the morning and a secondary mountain road equals an accident." Fortunately, except for some bruises, nothing serious happened.
The group's activities really begin when they share their rehearsal space, a basement that Juanvi had precisely, with another local group, Parasites, who provide amplifiers and bass for Isa to the deal. "Making songs was easy because we had a lot to spit against the system," said the guitarist to one of the fanzines that has interviewed her. The life of the band in that first stage was as follows: "(...) We would get together in the afternoon at the venue with a few liters of beer and there we would give birth to whatever occurred to us, when a concert came on we would leave with our clothes on and return the same but we had a great time and we met people ”. As a homemade promotion, they were in charge of filling the streets with graffiti that said “IV Reich, 1000 years of anarchy”.
As expected, they have been asked many times for the reason for the chosen name, if it responded to any specific meaning. They have always said they chose it, at Cota's suggestion, because they liked the way it sounded. It did not bring them too many problems with unwanted visits from some clueless attracted by the possible far-right connotations. In any case, they suppose that there would be those who were reluctant to their concerts, imagining that this was the political ideology of the group. It was not enough, however, to verify how wrong those suspicions were.
They started playing in bars in the city, where after agreement with the owners, they performed without charging anything. Street festivals and neighborhood and town festivals were also toured, sharing the stage and experiences with bands such as Más Birras, Distrito 14 or Parkinson.
The influences they had were, as Pilar does not hesitate to point out, in addition to the aforementioned Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, GBH and Discharge. Regarding the state scene, as well as Madrid, only La Uvi stands out, they do not hesitate to talk about their connection with the bands that started in the Basque Country (R.I.P., Cicatriz, Vulpess…). It was precisely in a room (Happy Day) in Rentería where Javi Sayes, responsible for the fanzine Destroy, invited them to play, in what would be the first concert the band gives outside of Zaragoza. Isa and Pilar recall the occasion in the documentary "No Accepto" (José A. Alfonso / Alberto Bocos Oyarbide, 2007) as the best performance they remember. For the same they could only be paid with beer and some money for gasoline. They played with R.I.P. and they were surprised by the response from the public, who spat at them on stage. They thought they didn't like it. Very different was the reaction they used to get when they played in the towns of their autonomous community, where it was not uncommon for them to throw stones at them or come out behind them chasing them.
It is not until 1984 that IV Reich prepares to record some of the songs it has in its repertoire. They do it in the form of a demo, with the money that the drummer's brother leaves them. They cannot consider the option of a disc, because it would have been much more expensive. The guitarist, when asked for details of the recording, tells us that it was made in the studios of some musicians from Zaragoza, who were in charge of all the production details and even mixing.
The demo, which came out in January, included ten songs, authentic cannon shots, presented with a breath-taking cover: death, scythe in hand, and dressed as a German soldier, advances towards us with barbed wire behind him. The group launched bombings against the police, governments, religion, and all kinds of powers; He predicted apocalypse and extermination of the human race. It also included the aforementioned song dedicated to Juanra "No al ejército". The song was recorded with the collaboration and assistance of Fray, the aforementioned singer of Decibelios. As Pilar explains to us, he helped them with the choirs and advised them on sound issues. This was also reflected in the corresponding acknowledgments. The connection with Fray begins with his friendship with the deceased Juanra, and will be cemented later with the relationship he would have with Isa. Directly related to the attitude towards the army and the friend's deadly accident is the release, that same year, of the song “Kill or die”, a chilling hardcore exercise that appeared both in the Barcelona long-running “Caldo de Chicken” (DRO, 1984) as in a single “Kill or Die” (DRO, 1984). In the latter, a text was included in which the dedication was made explicit to Juanra. IV Reich disbanded in 1985.
