When guitarists Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero released Mettavolution in 2019, it marked their first studio outing in five years. Their goal was to "reconnect with the physical rush and emotional core of the music we first made together." They succeeded. It not only charted but took home the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. Their 92-city world tour was met with wildly enthusiastic responses. The pair claimed the jaunt "was the very moment we felt truly complete as artists and musicians." The duo planned on continuing their road sojourn in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic intervened. Thankfully, they recorded most of those shows. This 81-minute, double-length set contains performances of the entire Mettavolution album with select concert staples.
Opener "Krotona Days" combines Quintero's rapid-fire strumming and palmas rhythms with Sánchez's extrapolated flamenco chord shapes. His leads are pure metal; they push at the rhythm while reinforcing its primacy. "The Soundmaker," from 9 Dead Alive, is more fluid here, its shifting dynamics melding folk and flamenco with hard rock's sense of narrative drama. The centerpiece of this 81-minute outing is their cover of Pink Floyd's "Echoes" as it was on the studio album. At 22 minutes, this version is both longer and far preferable. Free of the track's studio effects, the duo get to explore more of its hidden musical nuances in real time. The very moment the melody is first articulated by Sánchez, Quintero's chord voicings and syncopated polyrhythmic guitar slaps illustrate the tune's roots in English folk music -- Floyd deliberately hid them. Her athletic strumming bridges them to Mexican Regional and Spanish folk traditions in the jam's labyrinthine unfolding. Her dramatic sense allows space and texture to inform her interaction with Sánchez, who adds it to his own scalar development and adds a feint or two of his own -- including a playful nod to Nile Rogers' playing on Daft Punk's "Get Lucky." After his own pedal-heavy solo, they improvise on the changes harmonically without distracting from the core. It's breathtaking. The duo reach back to the very beginning with "Tamacun," played at twice the speed of the original with more lyric extrapolation and rhythmic power. "Hanuman," from 11:11, remains a potent flamenco-infused rocker with canny rhythmic shifts and stop-and-start turns, as Sánchez runs over the fretboard like a man possessed. "Terracentric," despite being played on acoustic guitars, is one of the best metal jams of the year. Sánchez's meaty wah-wah riffing melds major and minor scales with flawless technique without sacrificing the deep emotion in the melody. Quintero underscores, then expands the theme with mercurial shapes, syncopated guitar palmas, and mind-blowing rhythmic invention; the way she employs the guitar's body as an equal voice is not only singular, it's astonishing. Hearing Mettavolution Live back to back with its studio counterpart offers revelation. Rodrigo y Gabriela use their inexhaustible, reflexive creativity not as compensation for lack of studio control but to illustrate and communicate the beating language of the heart contained in the music itself.