Headlines have given little love to guitar heros in recent years, as streaming tastes favor rap and instruments of the greats are celebrated less onstage and more in museums.
But more than a decade after soaring to global fame Rodrigo y Gabriela — the Mexican classical guitar duo that draws inspiration as much from prog and thrash metal as flamenco and folk — is still going strong, recently releasing their first studio album in five years, “Mettavolution,” to rave reviews and embarking on a global tour.
Disenchanted by the rock scene in their native Mexico, Rodrigo y Gabriela moved to Europe in the late 1990s, settling in Dublin where they began busking and playing local pubs with their fusion of metal with Latin sounds.
It wasn’t long before the pair — which uses only nylon-stringed acoustic guitars to create their unique, frenetic style heavy on power chords and percussive elements — began winning legions of fans stateside as well as Europe and Latin America.
After the whirlwind success of their eponymous album in 2006 they quickly ascended to a global stage, playing everywhere from top festivals to Barack Obama’s White House.
Their latest work is a more melodic album than past recordings, a sound they achieved by first writing songs complete with lyrics before stripping away the words in a bid to help their fans meditate exclusively to the guitars.
“When we were kids we didn’t know what anxiety was,” said Rodrigo Sanchez backstage before the pair played an intimate show at Manhattan’s McKittrick Hotel, days after rocking New York’s larger Beacon Theatre.
“It wasn’t until literally a few years ago that we started to understand more . . . about the effects of meditation, things that could actually help to deal with these emotions,” the acoustic rocker with hair dyed electric blue told AFP.
Sanchez said the album evokes the pair’s recent “shift in consciousness” — both in their mid-forties, the metalheads are now vegan and have turned their interests to Buddhism and spiritual evolution — that helped them realize “playing music is not something we just do because we like it.”
“I think it’s a service for people,” Sanchez said. “It’s when we get in touch, really, with our deepest side of ourselves.”
