Death Metal vs. Donald Trump

The band Brujeria takes on the GOP nominee.

Nuclear Blast Records

On September 16 Nuclear Blast records will release Pocho Aztlán, the latest studio album by the Mexican-American death metal band Brujeria. The group combines thrashing guitars and blast-beat drumming with first-person lyrical accounts of murder, mayhem, and assorted acts of narco-terrorism, all sung (screamed) in Spanish. Needless to say, it's pure theater of the macabre. Just like Kiss and GWAR before them, Brujeria perform in the guise of outlandish fictional characters. Specifically, the members of Brujeria portray a gang of Satanic killers affiliated with Mexican drug cartels. Their songs tell the tales of their bloody "exploits."

Originally founded in 1989 as a side project of Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares and Faith No More bassist Billy Gould, Brujeria has turned into something of an underground music supergroup over the years, with a lineup that has featured such notable players as bassist Jeffrey Walker (Carcass) and drummer Nick Barker (Cradle of Filth/Dimmu Borgir). If you happen to enjoy extreme heavy metal and/or extremely violent crime or horror movies, you might enjoy Brujeria too.

The band's recent single "Viva Presidente Trump!" offers a nice introduction. Spoiler alert: It's not exactly a pro-Trump song. Translated, the lyrics include stuff like this:

He hates Mexicans
If Trump wins he'll deport everyone
He hates my race, he loves his money
That crazy güero is going to start a war

According to vocalist Juan Brujo (real name John Lepe), the song "was on shelf for years with no idea for vocals. It was gonna be an 'Anti-Castro' part II song but nothing came out of it. It just needed proper motivation to go an attach itself to someone…and Trump came thru!"

Check out the NSFW teaser video for "Viva Presidente Trump!" here.

Related: The politics of Megadeth and the politics of hardcore punk.

Comments

[The Late P Brooks]

Brujeria perform in the guise of outlandish fictional characters.

Do they wear masks?

[Ken Shultz]

They cover their faces, yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvDwmQ6rgDY

[Swiss Servator]

Oh fer Gawd's sake...we really just HAD to hear about this, eh?

*headdesk*

Maybe you could find some other edgy, "underground" act to bravely speak out!

[Fruit Sushi 2 Go]

A metal band writing an anti-Castro song? I'm skeptical...

The correlation between playing metal and being hard left is so strong, it might as well be a prerequisite.

[Chipwooder]

Eh, don't know about that. I'm not a huge metal guy, but I'm a fan of several of the classic bands (Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Sabbath, old Metallica, Anthrax) and most of them were generally apolitical. Mustaine certainly never was on the left, even before his born-again Christian period. Slayer was accused of Nazi sympathies more than a few times, as was Lemmy for his obsession with Wehrmacht artifacts.

[Florida Hipster]

Lemy said if the Brits had better uniforms he would have collected British uniforms instead of German.

[Chipwooder]

And he's right about that. Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, but they had killer uniforms, insignias, medals, etc. I mean, Hugo Boss is still around as a label despite being the clothier of the SS for a reason - he made it look good.

[Red Rocks Okey-Dokein]

I'm a fan of several of the classic bands (Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Sabbath, old Metallica, Anthrax) and most of them were generally apolitical

By today's standards, they were downright anodyne, but there was plenty of political commentary in their work through the late 80s. The thrash bands especially featured quite a bit of social and political criticism of Reagan-era America.

[Chipwooder]

Social commentary, yes, but I can't think of much in the way of heavy-handed political songs like punk/hardcore was drenched in at the time

[Trigger Warning]

The correlation between playing metal and being hard left is so strong, it might as well be a prerequisite.

Uh, no. Not every metal band is from Sweden.

[JW]

How about Canuck indie bands slobbering on Hugo Chavez's dong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PhRfxSbGsw

[Chipper Morning Wood]

What the fuck are you talking about. The fountainhead of metal music is the hate of hippies. That is what motivated Black Sabbath, the first metal band. Many English metal musicians are Euro skeptics and many Scandinavian metal bands are downright racist (or at least were in the 90s).

[Eternal Blue Sky]

Seems like one of those metal bands with the tired, cliched lyrical content.

[Hugh Akston]

You mean a metal band?

[sarcasmic]

Doesn't that describe them all?

[Zeb]

I can't understand any of the lyrics from most metal bands, so it really makes no difference to me.

[Mongo]

I can't understand nearly all rock song lyrics and even pop songs.

Lyrical content is the last thing I look for in music.

[Zeb]

Unless the lyrics are the main thing, which is the case for a few bands and performers I like, they are pretty irrelevant. There are several bands who I've thought less of after actually reading their lyrics. It sounded so much cooler when you only understood the occasional phrase.

[sarcasmic]

Lyrics are just shit that someone puts together that rhymes and fits the beat. Nothing more.

[Zeb]

Occasionally there is some decent poetry in lyrics, but that's pretty rare, really. Most attempts at some kind of literary seriousness just come off as silly.

[np]

The one area I do find lyrics enjoyable are when it's used for good storytelling, as in a fictional world unrelated to current politics.

[Chipper Morning Wood]

It varies. Children of Bodom lyrics are irrelevant. Tool or Opeth lyrics, on the other hand, are integral to the music.

[np]

Nowadays nearly all of the music I listen to don't have lyrics or where they don't matter (some vocals thrown in occasionally as part of the music)

Most of the lyric-free metal themed music can be found in non-traditional sources like soundtracks or covers or trailer songs or electronic-fusion bands.

[MP]

The Nuclear Blast label is still around? NICE! I'm so fucking out of touch.

[robc]

Just to be clear, the fictional characters don't like Trump. We have no idea how the actual musicians feel.

[Trigger Warning]

I think their singer was at the GOP convention.

[Rhywun]

I feel like I'm living in post-punk England and Trump hasn't even been elected yet.

[JLM]

They've been playing the trump song on sirius/xm liquid metal for quite a while.

[Trigger Warning]

Great post, Damon. These guys are pretty fun listening, mostly because of Dino. Lyrics are pretty dumb, but I don't think many people can understand growling and screaming in Spanish, anyway.

[Rhywun]

I don't think many people can understand growling and screaming in Spanish, anyway.

I prefer Hocico for that.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

Hell bent, Hell bent for leathah!

[Rhywun]

What's Spanish for "chaps"?

[Ceci n'est pas un woodchipper]

I'm not sure that I would refer to Brujeria as a "extreme metal", frankly. I'd call them a metal band only in the broadest understanding of the genre.

[JLM]

The only other song of theirs that I'm familiar with is called Marijuana, which is basically the macarena in Spanish metal. Funny stuff, but more a spoof band like gwar than "extreme metal".

[Mongo]

Their spoof song just happened to be the the one played on college radio. The rest of their catalog was way to rough for college radio ( they were a staple on KFAI radio's Root of All Evil six-hour metal show).

[Zeb]

So you're going to be that guy, eh?

Well, Wikipedia says they are, so it must be true.

[C. S. P. Schofield]

There's this to be said for a war with Mexico; we'd win fairly quickly, could actually make use of the territory, amd we'd govern it better than it is governed now.

[Agammamon]

To be fair to the Mexican government - *we've pretty much deliberately* worked really hard to make Northern Mexico ungovernable.

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

+150,000 drug war casualties.

[Zeb]

I think it's about time the US just says "fuck it" and tries to take over the whole world.

[DJF]

How about if we say "fuck it" and not try to take over the world.

After all our record of "nation building" around the world seems to leave more failed states then fixed states

[Zeb]

But we've never really, openly attempted to rule the world. If everyone is going to accuse the US of colonialism and imperialism, we might as well do it for real.

Sure, it would probably turn to shit. But we're the only ones remotely capable of it. And it would make for some interesting history for future people to read about. That's how we should judge things from now on: by how interesting it will be to learn about in the future.

Failing world conquest, there is always nuking the Moon.

[DJF]

But the same people who screw up running the US will be in charge of both ruling the world and nuking the moon.

I don't trust them now to run a lemonade stand so why would I think they could run the world or a nuking.

Better plan is to make a space craft to travel to another solar system and we put all the best and brightest on it and send them off

"best and brightest" would include all the politicians and their flunkies

[Zeb]

I think that already happened, and we are descended from those people.

[DJF]

We tried that with Puerto Rico.

And the results are in, there are more Puerto Ricans in the US then in their homeland and Puerto Rico itself is bankrupt.

[Zeb]

Does Puerto Rico produce anything? At least Mexico provides us with limes, delivers our cocaine and assembles our electronics and automobiles.

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Puerto Ricans are their number one export.

[Mongo]

They were my favorite band of the 90s though I'm a bit surprised they're still around.

I remember showing a Mexican co-worker the album cover to Matandos Gueros and asking him what it meant.

[SIV]

No president inspired more anti- songs than Ronald Reagan. If you were a hardcore band you had to have at least one in the repetoire even if you liked him.

[Colonel Slanders]

Yup, and we did (liked him and had one of those anti-Reagan screeds)

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

Band name?

[Colonel Slanders]

Gore (Detroit)

[DEATFBIRSECIA]

Listened to a little bit of Stem the Bloodbath, not bad...

[$park? is totally a Swifty]

To the people that enjoy listening to this stuff: why?

[Mongo]

We live in the Midwest surrounded by folks with shit-eating grins.

[$park? is totally a Swifty]

That's as good a reason as any. Of all the times I've tried, I could never get into it. Apparently it's just over a line that my ears will not cross.

[Chipwooder]

I am by nature an angry person and I enjoy angry music.

[Zeb]

It's a acquired taste.

[commodious needs a drink]

In real news:

An audit report by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security claims the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency has been unable to provide documentation for $30.5 million in state funds that were supposedly paid to contractors for work on 945 homes in Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties as part of the state's Coastal Retrofit Program.

The contractor invoices are now being held by MEMA because Mississippi is investigating the program and looking for documents to validate the contractor payments.

Because the state could still seek nearly $30 million in federal reimbursement for the expenditures, the inspector general called on FEMA to put the brakes on further payments for program.

"We recommend that FEMA deobligate or suspend the entire $29.9 million (in reimbursements) until Mississippi provides proper oversight of the program and reasonable assurance that federal funds can be properly accounted for and expended in accordance with federal regulations and FEMA guidelines," the report said.

In a July 14 response, a FEMA regional administrator, Gracia Szczech, said the agency will suspend payments until proper documentation is provided.

[Ken Shultz]

"Check out the NSFW teaser video for "Viva Presidente Trump!" here."

Giving people a heads up about something that might get them in trouble at work isn't the same thing as a trigger warning. However, there are a lot of SJWs and progressive types out there who don't know or can't see the difference between "NSFW" and a trigger warning--so I've stopped using "NSFW" elsewhere.

I just like people here.

TSOL's "Code Blue" is about necrophilia.

The theme song from your favorite zombie movie is much, much worse than "Code Blue"--or the lyrics to just about any death metal song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr9KRAMydf0

And as much as I like the people here, elsewhere, if they don't know that death metal videos are NSFW, getting people fired for watching them at work is probably striking a blow for responsible entrepreneurship and capitalism.

[Tak Kak]

Who would think the band behind "Matando G?eros" would be anti-Trump??

While we're on it, I think "Matando G?eros" is completely responsible for Trump.

[Colonel Slanders]

Trying to negotiate the streams of politics in the Metal/Punk genres is a nightmare best not trodden by the weak. I've been trying to do it for 30 years and learned one thing: Do/say/write whatever it is you THINK. In the end you'll piss somebody/some splinter group off and make all the right enemies and then you'll know you're doing it right. 20 years ago it was the Rightists/Skinheads, Today it is the psychotic left.