Heroes Del Silencio Tour 2007 CD

Ten years after breaking up after a decade of international success as one of the premier rock en español bands of their time, Heroes del Silencio reunited for a brief ten-date concert tour of the Spanish-language world in 2007 in commemoration of their 20-year anniversary. The tour included performances in Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Monterrey, Los Angeles, Sevilla, Zaragoza, and Valencia. Released in a few different formats, the live album Tour 2007 documents the band's reunion tour, primarily the Mexico City performance. Beginning with their recording debut in 1987 with the Héroe de Leyenda EP, Heroes del Silencio were one of the premier rock en español bands of their time, rivaled by only Soda Stereo, Maná, and La Ley in terms of influence and popularity. However, despite its stature, the band only released four studio albums (El Mar No Cesa [1988], Senderos de Traición [1990], El Espíritu del Vino [1993], and Avalancha [1995]) before breaking up in 1997 amid insurmountable internal tension, particularly between lead vocalist Enrique Bunbury and lead guitarist Juan Valdivia. In addition to these studio albums, the double-disc live album Para Siempre (1996) documents the band's tour together, culling material from a pair of June 1996 dates in Spain. Like Para Siempre, Tour 2007 is a double-disc collection that finds Heroes del Silencio performing their best-known material, 28 songs in total. Also like Para Siempre, Tour 2007 boasts stellar sound quality. If anything, it's too clean. Without the crowd noise, singalongs, and between-song banter, this live recording could be mistaken for a studio effort. Given the studio-quality sound and the abundance of fan favorites such as "Avalancha," "Maldito Duende," and "Entre Dos Tierras," Tour 2007 not only documents the band's reunion tour; it also serves well as a greatest-hits retrospective. Among the different editions released, available formats include two-CD, two-DVD, and two-CD/two-DVD collections. The performances on the CDs and DVDs are the same, though the DVD collections add a documentary, "Vuelo Privado." ~ Jason Birchmeier

Heroes del Silencio: Enrique Bunbury (vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica); Juan Valdivia (guitar); Joaquin Cardiel (bass guitar, background vocals); Pedro Andreu (drums).