In addition to the best, Extremoduro is surely the most hopelessly atheist group in the history of national rock. But his fans have turned it into a religion. This journalist does not say it, he says it Iñaki ‘Uoho’ Antonthe faithful squire of Robert Iniestaknown as Robe, in the ranks of this key band of Spanish music in recent decades.
«We have made a lot of dough, it has gone very well for us, we have enjoyed it a lot, but there was a moment when extreme hard it was so great that it transcended anything we did musically”, said the Basque guitarist in a recent chat with ABC, who does not hold any grudges after the group’s hasty separation and describes his experience with ‘Robe’ as “thirty years of experiences, of memories, of good times, of friendship… There are many marriages that last less».
How could it be otherwise, ‘Uoho’ is one of the great stars of ‘Extremoduro: Deep’, a book that would not have been the same without his help since he has contributed photographs from his personal archive. Throughout almost six hundred pages, its author, Javier Menéndez Flores, not only traces an exhaustive journey through the group’s history from its very difficult beginnings until its dissolution in 2019, but also immerses himself in the titanic task of carrying out a deep analysis of the imaginary of this band through the dissection of its lyrics.
“There have been very few Spanish rock bands as personal and exciting as Extremoduro,” says Menéndez Flores. «Roberto Iniesta, its founder and emblem, coined the expression ‘transgressive rock’ to define the type of music they made, characterized by the union of fiercely visceral poetry, unparalleled in the field of popular song, and structures musicals that rebelled against the usual formulas. Despite being ignored for years by the big media, his speech seduced thousands of people from different generations and social strata, and became a cultural phenomenon worthy of study ».
This edition of ‘De profundis’ has more than 150 unpublished pages with new statements from the protagonists and goes right up to the very separation of the group, as bizarre as its own foundation. “The first eight years of Extremoduro’s life were a continual walk on a glowing wire,” describes the author of the book. «The fights with the record labels, the economic hardships, the narcotic excesses, the contempt of the media and the replacement of musicians, who entered and left the formation as if instead of a music group it were a band of robbers, they exemplify to what extent when a man believes in his artistic project and endures, he can work the miracle».
with everything against
In order to survive in a record ecosystem that repulsed him, ‘Robe’ covered his nose and managed to thrive thanks to unusual art on the rock scene, which, on the other hand, was no longer enjoying its best moment after the hangover from la movida. “She lived in her meager skin, typhoons and total losses, having almost everything against her,” says Menéndez Flores. «But he managed to overcome that succession of calamities thanks to a stubbornness fueled by security – with all the insecurities of the artist at the same time – in his own talent. He would never have achieved it without the help of Iñaki, a total musician with crystal-clear ideas, whom Robe asked to come to his aid because if what he had in his hands did not work out, he would turn his head ‘to the plate’ ».
The book reviews the history of the group through the experiences of its members, the history of its songs, its albums and its parallel projects, and ends with the sad episode of separation due to the impossibility of doing a farewell tour as the leader would have liked. And this is where ‘De profundis’ tears the fan apart, demonstrating with first-hand witnesses that Robe and Iñaki no longer had as good a relationship as before.
The drama was anthological because, as Flores points out, “the followers gave the group a divine character”, something that did Extremoduro no good. “It seems that a hugely successful artist is a demigod, who is above good and evil, and that I don’t think he is good at all. Of course, it is not for those artists, who are still mere mortals who have been taken so high by a mixture of talent and luck».
Robe participated “with great affection” in the first edition. «In fact, it was he who proposed my name to the publisher. But in this he did not want to intervene », says Flores, who could not get a few last words out of him about the end of Extremoduro, surely because it hurt him to verbalize his thoughts about it. “Uoho said yes, he told me to count on him, but Robe finally wrote to me last summer, two years after my first email, to tell me he didn’t want to talk about the breakup.”