PAX — May God and Your Will Land You and Your Soul Miles Away from Evil (review)

PAX — May God and Your Will Land You and Your Soul Miles Away from Evil album cover

Album · 1970 · Proto-Metal

3/5 · 2015-03-31
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Pax is the band project of guitarist Enrique “Pico” Ego Auirre Pajuelo of Peru. He originally played in a band called Los Shain’s in the 1960’s and later formed Los Nuevos Shain’s as he wanted to record heavier music which was not what Los Shain’s had been doing. Though music from Europe and the U.S. was not easy to come by, it seems Pico had a good ear to the ground as Los Nuevos Shain’s sole album of 1969 included a cover of an early version of Black Sabbath’s “Wicked World”. Soon after, Pico and members changed the band’s name to Pax, which is peace in Spanish.

As Pax, the band recorded a single in 1969, “Firefly” b/w “Resurrection of the Sun”. They followed this up with their sole album of the 70’s, “May God and Your Will Land You and Your Soul Miles Away from Evil”. Yes, I know. Long title. Heavily influenced by Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck and the Yardbirds, Blind Faith, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and other bands who were part of the “creative force of the 70’s”, Pax tried to write music that reflected their influences. Around 1973 they recorded some cover songs including “Smoke on the Water”, “Radar Love” (by Golden Earring), “Dark Rose” (by Brainbox), “Mr. Skin” (by Spirit), and “Exorcism” (by Billy Cobham). Rock was not in favour with the military government and by 1974 Pico had to let Pax fold. He revived it again in the 80’s and once more in the 00’s. The band is still said to be active today.

The version of the album I have includes the entire debut plus the first single and b-side as well as the covers from c.1973. These were previously released on an album entitled “Dark Rose” which apparently included most of the debut’s songs. So this is a pretty complete set of songs to get from what I can see.

The album indeed reflects the band’s and Pico’s various influences. The single “Firefly” and the debut’s opening track “A Storyless Junkie” are very Sabbath influenced which is pretty surprising since they were recorded in ’69 and ’70 respectively. The guitar is heavy, the riffs doomy, and the solos very Iommi inspired. “Pig Pen Boogie” is likely the heaviest song tone for tonne, even though it starts off sounding like a blues boogie rock song. It’s just too ridiculously heavy to be one. Other tracks that fit the proto-metal and heavy psychedelic bill are “Deep Death”, which doesn’t begin so menacingly but features a simple but doom-laden part that crops up in three places, and the obviously Hendrix inspired “Sittin’ on My Head”.

Other songs from the album include the good-time piano and guitar rock and roll number “Rock an’ Ball”, the acoustic hippie track “Green Paper (Toilet)”, The Beatles to Led Zeppelin inspired acoustic / electric number “For Celia” and the short but very silly “Shake Your Ass”. “Firefly”’s b-side “Resurrection of the Sun” is like a slow and heavy Uriah Heep number with a drenching of Hammond organ.

Up to here, the music is quite good and really rocking in places but the sound quality is rather muddy. The heavy guitar and drums are behind the higher tones like vocals and high hat, and the bass sounds either really loud in the mix or hard to notice. Recording quality aside, this is pretty darn good proto-metal. The lyrics are in English and there’s no discernable Spanish accent. They have a nice rough edge to them that suits the musical style.

The bonus tracks have a much better sound quality, and though songs like “Smoke of the Water” and “Radar Love” have nothing new brought to them, they are very good covers. “Exorcist” and “Dark Rose” feature some very heavy and funky music with some blazing even shredding guitar solos.

This is a remarkable amalgamation of proto-metal influences. If the recording quality were only better on the tracks from ’69 and ’70 we’d really have a fantastic bit of work to discuss. However, if you don’t mind the low-fi quality then this is still worth hearing. I think it’s pretty incredible that heavy metal took on so quickly in a country that seems very unlikely to have been able to support it at the time. Searching for “Pax may god and your will” on Google brought up only about 12 hits and most of them are in Spanish. But there’s a translation to English of a more recent interview with Pico at Blogspot’s “psychedelicbaby” and the web site “The Day After the Sabbath” has a feature on Peruvian rock from the 60’s and 70’s which mentions and features music by Los Nuevos Shain’s and Pax.