Ten songs, four years, and three working-class thirty-somethings from Madrid trying to process what it means to live, work, and create in a country where tradition and burnout often blur into the same wallpaper. Copas. Espadas. Oros. Bastos., the debut full-length by Calatrava is a straight-to-the-point display of DIY noise-punk and organic, very natural sounding post hardcore shaped through improvisation and lived experience.
Released April 2, 2025 via Estudio Mazmorra and Mecagoendios Records, the album was written, recorded, and produced by the band all by themselves.
Calatrava formed in 2017 in Madrid, playing a handful of local gigs before solidifying its current form in 2020. Their 2021 debut EP introduced Pablo’s unmistakable vocals and a sound that was already leaning toward abrasion and density. A year later, they released Con pasión desde Alcorcón, a six-track live studio session captured in one take—unembellished and broadcast as-is, prelude to a tour with Chief Tail (Reptilian Records).
By 2024, the band decided to archive everything they’d built over the last four years into one full-length. The result is a collection that reflects their evolution from early stoner-metal leanings to something rawer and more unsparing—eclectic noise-punk, as they call it. The process is deliberately chaotic. Songs often start from small riffs born at home, but it’s in rehearsal, through improvisation, that the tracks take shape.
Raúl’s arrival in 2020 anchored this direction. Though the three members bring different musical influences to the table, there’s consensus around the blueprint: the Jesus Lizard, Metz, Pissed Jeans, Shellac, Hot Snakes, Betunizer. This isn’t pastiche, though. Copas. Espadas. Oros. Bastos. lives in a specific place—centralized Spain—and reflects a specific exhaustion.
The lyrics sit firmly in the here and now. No escapism. No abstraction. Housing precarity, mental health, cultural atrophy, digital dependency, daily politics—all laid out with biting humor and minimal ceremony. The band calls it “a country condensed into ten raw, direct, and attitude-filled songs.” It’s not commentary from a distance. These are the stories Calatrava has lived. Their tone is part defeat, part clarity. The humor isn’t a crutch—it’s a defense mechanism sharpened by repetition and futility.
Visually, the album carries the same tone. The cover—illustrated by guitarist Raúl—depicts a fruit basket, a reproduction of a ceramic tile image from a 1960s Asturian home.
It references a certain brand of pop culture nostalgia: the sanitized, empty mediocrity of a Spain that pretends it has moved forward while repeating the same gestures.
The back cover features the aces from the traditional Spanish playing card deck. These symbols—cups, swords, gold coins, and clubs—aren’t just album art. They’re cultural residue. The kind of thing you grow up seeing so often it becomes invisible. Calatrava makes it visible again, under a harsher light.
The record will be performed across Spain throughout 2025, as the band looks to further embed itself in the country’s underground. Not the Spotify-friendly underground, not the festival showcase circuit—but the one where gear breaks, venues don’t always pay, and the music comes out different every night. The one where people still listen to entire records, still print shirts by hand, still argue about soundchecks.
Calatrava remains critical of the current trajectory of the local scene, especially the way it’s tilted toward a flattened-out indie-pop aesthetic. “We see the music industry as a meat grinder that stifles creativity, creating a homogenous sound among bands while prioritizing financial gain over artistic expression.”
Still, they continue—drawn forward by a loose community of like-minded acts. They name Los Chivatos, Demo Rally, Pionera, Viuda, Finale, Perro, Medalla as artists worth attention. And they name the few labels still holding the line: Estudio Mazmorra, Flexidiscos.
There’s nothing abstract about Copas. Espadas. Oros. Bastos.. It’s a document—personal, specific, and intentionally resistant to spectacle. It doesn’t resolve anything, and it’s not trying to. Calatrava didn’t make this record to celebrate survival. They made it because pretending not to feel anything stopped working.
