CD review BETONTOD ‘Vamos!’

(7/10) One year after having released the very successful ‘Revolution’ album, German punk rocker Betontod launched their newest album ‘Vamos!’ a few weeks ago. The story of Betontod is a successful one. The band from Reinberg, Germany started in the early 90’s and after having published some demos it was the ‘Hier kommt Aerger’ album with which the band debuted.

In the meantime, many years passed by and Betontod faced a constantly growing fan base. At the end of 2016, the guys played the 1000^th show and quite some longplayers helped to establish the band in Germany’s rock scene.

Chart entries are also nothing new for the Betontod and it was the ‘Revolution’ album that even made it up to position 3 in the German longplayer charts. Such a success also raises the question if pressures rising too, impacting the next album.

After having listened to ‘Vamos!’ a few times I can say that Betontod still rocks very well, although some more average songs ended up on the album too. After an intro, it’s ‘Zusammen’ that kicks off the album in an energetic fashion. It’s a classic punk rock song, being right to the point and with ‘ohohoh’ sing-a-long parts.

The title track is next and has a surprisingly metallic expression with Maiden-like guitars are very present. The song isn’t bad but it also doesn’t really wow. ‘La Familia’ is another song that doesn’t belong to the best Betontod ever released. Next to these songs there are tracks like the highly emotional ‘ Niemals untergehen’ that works very well and also the cool rocking ‘Bengalo’ belongs to the good songs on ‘Vamos!’ and the same goes for ‘Diese Zeit’ which is the closer of the album.

‘Vamos!’ isn’t a bad album but it stands for a shift. Betontod’s newest strike includes the punk roots, but also added a robust rock vibe to most of the tracks. It might be too much for some of the old-school fans. However, with an album like this, another Top 10 score in the charts should be possible and it’s in one or another way also what’s deserved.

(7/10)

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