Side A:
Side B:
HAZ - the ass-backwards band: First album looks great but is shit. 2nd album looks like shit but is ...great? For an obscure Venezuelan 80's private pressing, yes. Generally speaking? Well, let's be a bit more selective when picking our superlatives this time, shall we? Bad it certainly isn't. Thankfully it doesn't sound the least bit like the same band who did the dire "Hechiceros" album 5 years earlier, but neither does it sound like a band who've spent 5 years in the rehearsal studio refining and perfecting their sound. Only the two Fiore brothers remain from the original line-up of the debut and this time around they're proper, straight-up, solid Heavy Metal - more so than the B*n J*vi-outfits in the sleeve pics would imply - but of a quite square and simplified variety.
The title translates as "All Together" = sing-along, anthemic title-track, obviously. Nothing extraordinary in that cathegory, but the odd mix of the crude, chugging verses and that chorus is a funny one and it provides a good introduction into what kind of an album this is. Other details of notice are the titles "Sacrificio Infernal" and "Momento De Horror" which just has to be good and they are, especially "Sacrificio.." with its haunting church bell intro and great, fist-in-the-air chorus. There's speed too, like in "Yo Al Cielo No Ire" and the neat, Jaguar'ish "Dia De Descarga". Apart from the usual couple of seedy ballads
there's no outright crappy moments of the album, but it would take at least one more highlight rising above the stock rockmetal riffing for me to recommend it to anyone outside the 'Latino-Metal' fan club.
It's hard not to draw comparisons to their spiritual 'elder brothers' like Arkangel and Resistencia, and HAZ is a far cry from those Legends, both in quality and performance.
If we however lower our standards some and instead compare them to their less popular siblings like Grand Bite, Fahrenheit or Tarot, then yeah, "Todos Unidos" rises to the top of the crème de la... whatever the opposite of "crème" is.