Raza odiada

Brujería’s second offer features a prominent death metal influence and some resemblance to modern grooves between their old school grindcore, the only face the band shown on their debut. The record’s production is slightly better, there are improvements on the thickness of the string tracks and the vivid and more realistic and live sound of the drums. The subversive atmosphere is intact and the attitude is even meaner. Lyrics about Satanism and heavy drugs give an ironic and parodist feel to the music, beginning with Juan Brujo’s weird Anglo-Saxon accent for the roughly translated to Spanish words. Riffing is still aggressive and simple, very punky and streetwise.

Beside the addition of more hardcore influenced grooves, another aspect I notice they changed is the choice of a regular undistorted bass tone. The tuning is still ultra-low; giving a dense edge to the music, but the natural tone of the bass is more surrounding and gives a hugging characteristic to the music. The low end also anchors the guitar tracks to the percussion, serving as a rhythmic pulse effectively. It’s not extremely loud in the mix but it can be fully heard almost at any moment, it doesn’t get away from the guitar’s riffs though. 6 string axe’s distortion is more compressed and consistent than the acid and sharp sound they had on their previous effort, this gives a lot of punch to the aggressive and fast riffing.

The drums accompany the drums with their rabid and violent blast beating and hardcore punk tempo “tupa-tupas”. Cymbals are recorded nicely and can be heard clearly, the performance by Greñudo is accurate and precise but there’s something in his technique that make him sound more human than most of the ultra-technical drummers we hear nowadays. It’s not like he’s sloppy, it’s just something with the strength he hits the cymbals and the toms; it’s not so even in each strike. This fits the music perfectly and gives it a more truthful and realistic sound, for a band that just jams every now and then and records its albums in a couple of sessions.

The modern grooves they incorporated to their songs make them lengthier and richer in terms of flow and composition, they aren’t as squared and old-school as they were on “Matando Güeros” which is still a killer album. Some heavier, mechanic and repetitive riffs are used. I would consider them generic because in some cause they are so rhythmic they almost forget the lead role in the strings and they are usually predictable and an unashamed and barefaced failure in the search of a more evil sound. But Brujería´s ones are more memorable and effective; somehow they keep the heavy and dark essence of the old school and combines them with the modern styled riffs and production.