Reviews list for Brujeria - Matando güeros (1993)

Back in the pre-internet days, it wasn’t uncommon for devoted metalheads to make the blind purchase of a new release based purely on cover art, the involvement of a key individual & a general hunch that it was worth pursuing. The 1993 debut album “Matando gueros” was very much the sum of all three for me as a seventeen year-old with the cover artwork clearly depicting someone holding up what looks very much like a severed head (i.e. some bad ass shit that would shock everyone around me which was a major tick for me at the time) & the mysterious masked band reportedly containing some of metal’s most prominent heroes, many years later being confirmed as Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares & drummer Raymond Herrera, Napalm Death/Lock Up/Meathook Seed/Unseen Terror bassist Shane Embury & Faith No More bassist Billy Gould. These attractions would see me purchasing Brujeria’s debut album on CD & eagerly racing home with hopes of something genuinely special. Did those hopes end up being met? Weeellll…. No, I’d suggest not… but it was no doubt a pretty fun record to thrash my teenage body around my bedroom to nonetheless.

The Brujeria side-project was definitely an interesting concept on paper with the idea of a psychotic, murderous bunch of Mexican drug lords somehow living a double life as an extreme deathgrind band immediately providing pay-off through a humorous intro piece that set the scene for what was to come. “Matando gueros” took on the classic grindcore format with its nineteen short songs spanning just 32-minutes. It didn’t offer anything drastically different to other deathgrind records from an instrumental perspective but contained a clear differentiator in the rabid Mexican-language death metal vocals of Juan Brujo & Pinche Peach. The production job was kept suitably dirty & (unlike Fear Factory) the performances don’t focus too hard on precision, instead aiming less for seriousness & more for unbridled fun. There’s a noticeable grooviness to some of the riffs but Brujeria are at their best when they’re at their most brutal & grinding in my opinion. This isn’t one of those grind records where every track sounds the same either with brief u-turns into alternative subgenres like industrial metal taking place here & there.

The tracklisting has its ups & downs & I wouldn’t say that there is anything terribly life-changing included here. The wins outweigh the losses by a significant margin though with only a few tracks not managing to maintain my interest. Strangely, it’s the most highly regarded of those that I find myself struggling with the most as the groovy title track does pretty much nothing for me. Give me blasting deathgrind over that shit any day of the week I say & particularly when it’s done as well as highlights like “Leyes narcos”, “Cruza la frontera” & “Chinga de mecos”.

The album is all over in a flash of fun & there is the potential for the whole thing to fly straight over your head if you’re not paying close attention. Repeat listens will see you becoming accustomed to the song-writing fairly swiftly though & it’ll come down to taste as to just how much of impact “Matando gueros” ends up having on you. Personally, I find it to be a pretty enjoyable yet largely inessential extreme metal party record that shouldn’t be taken too seriously. The band clearly had their tongues in their cheeks while they wrote this material but there’s still more than enough substance to satisfy the hard-nosed grindcore enthusiasts out there.

For fans of Asesino, Napalm Death & Machetazo.

I have made some great discoveries using this site and Matando güeros rates as perhaps one of my favourites.  My experience of the grindcore scene is limited to my Carcass albums and the occasional blast of Napalm Death.  As I get older, I feel the need to discover more of the branches of metal that I have neglected to pay too much attention to all the more and as a result encounter a lot of shite.  Sites like this give me great filters and can lead to some pretty neat finds.

Boasting a line up of multi-tudinous "stars" of the metal scene, with Dino Cazares of Fear Factory fame on guitars (he was in the band for 16 years), Shane Embury of Napalm Death fame on bass and additional guitars, on more bass and guitars is Faith No More's Billy Gould and the legendary former Dead Kennedy's vocalist Eric Reed Boucher narrates and is a founding member of the band also.  What a fucking line-up!

As you would expect for the genre and the talent on display the album is a fucking blast from start to finish and just sounds like a bunch of guys hanging out at one of their houses jamming in the basement or garage and having a great time doing so.  It is nineteen tracks of pure shit off a shovel intensity that covers thirty two minutes run time and slaps you silly during the process.  Literally no fucks are given on this record and I love it for that one fact alone.  You can feel the relaxed nature to the whole delivery.  It is unapologetic for the bastard child that it is and just wants you to come along for the ride.

Standout moments are the riffs that chop away at the listener throughout the record but Molestando niños muertos sounds like they loosened up the bass strings to the point were they are slapping the living hell out of the fretboard, creating a raw and filthy sounding roar that planes the skin off your face if you sit too close to the speakers.  It is more like a shockwave than a simple reverb.

This is entertaining for me no matter what I am doing.  Whether it is working and being unable to focus too much on an album or simply just sat drinking in my garden treating the neighbours to some Mexican based grindcore it is just like a soundtrack that fits my life brilliantly.