El Código Duello is the debut full-length album by Jack and Jim Ivins, also known as The Ivins.
The first single from El Código Duello titled “Stockholm Syndrome,” tells the story of living through an emotionally damaging relationship. The track has an awesome, raunchy bass line and fast drumming (think late-90’s or early-00’s grunge music) under a cool falsetto voice.
One stand-out track on the album, “Tell Me,” is the story of a plane crash Jim Ivins was almost in on the way back from a weekend of college visits as a teenager. The track is everything he was thinking on the plane:, everything from the love he never found (“I couldn’t tell the wife I never had goodbye”) to thoughts of his own mortality.
Musically, “Tell Me” has a groovy bass track and an almost-jazz guitar sound with soft drumming that makes the depressing content almost sound upbeat.
The only love song on the album, “Roam The World,” sounds about as far from a love song as you can imagine. The song has a very Alice In Chains sound, with multi-part harmonies set over heavy guitars.
During an interview with Altwire, singer/guitarist Jim Ivins said the term “immediate” was used quite frequently during the production of the album. Most of the tracks on the album are under three minutes long. This leads to one of the drawbacks of the album: It goes by really quickly, and after a short while, all of the tracks sort of seem to mesh together. If it weren’t for the break between songs, I would have had a hard time keeping up.
El Código Duello will be released on April 28. In anticipation, Jim Ivins has been offering followers an inside look into several of their tracks in a blog he calls the “’Cracking The Code’ Diaries,” which can be found on their website at www.theivins.com.
