Abermals Rock Out Like It's 1999 on New Album Reasons To Travel

4.5 out of 5 stars

Abermals is a Spanish alt-rock band from Mallorca de Palma that blends a bit of surf rock with psychedelic rock and puts it in a blender and pours it over the top of a punk rock waffle.

The band just released their new album Reasons to Travel, and it is sonically equivalent to some of the 90’s alternative bands like Blind Melon or Sunny Day Real Estate, but with a bit more gravel and grit in the tone.

I won’t say that Abermals is quite on the level of Blind Melon or SDRE as those two bands are high on my list of favorite bands of all time, HOWEVER, this release definitely brings me back to those albums when I was growing up and gives me renewed hope that the very particular type of rock isn’t lost.

The album starts out as a bit of a slow burn as the first song “You” has a minimalistic amount of lyrics - at first I thought it was an instrumental.

But by the second song, “Amadeus” you get a more uptempo, straightforward rock song.

My favorite song on the album is “Belong” which runs about 4 minutes of pretty pure alternative rock with the catchiest chorus on the album, in my opinion (well, except maybe “Segunda Inspeccion”).

The song “Tripping on LEDs” is quite good as well with its bit of surf rock guitar intro that rips into a more punk rock song than most on the album. 

The only thing that may stop this from scoring higher is that the album was self-mixed by the band’s lead singer Chris Spath. That’s not to say it isn’t done well. It just isn’t as well mixed as a professional studio would do. So, you do get a bit more “rough around the edges” sound on the album, but I am okay with it as the music is still quite good.

I would definitely recommend checking this album out.