After the success of the covers' album Otras Canciones,
Attaque 77 released its first album with new songs in three years. Recorded in Madrid, it's always mentioned as a "mature album," because it's probably the best produced and arranged set of songs ever recorded by the band. Ironically the lyrics are deliberately adolescent and there's a melancholic -- and a bit naïve- look over a golden and lost age: the adolescence. As well as
Ramones,
Attaque 77 could easily have covered
Tom Waits' "I don't wanna grow up"." There's some reggae approach in "Resistire" and pop flavour in "Beatle" and "El camino," but the rest of the fifteen track material is pure melodic punk-rock.
Radio Insomnio may not be an innovative record per se, but it's really satisfying; you can see the band in good shape, with an intense care for melody and arrangements but without leaving behind their punk-rock impulse. ~ Iván Adaime