Extreme metallers BRUJERIA have announced their “Raza Odiada West America Tour 2022”. The 18-date Southwest trek will kick off on April 26 in Mesa, Arizona, and make stops in Albuquerque, Dallas, and Tucson before concluding on May 15 in Palmdale, California. Support on the tour will come from GOATWHORE and UNIDAD TRAUMA.

Juan Brujo comments: “Regresando desmadre Post-Covid! Esto es Brujeria!”

General admission tickets for the tour are now on sale.

Confirmed dates for BRUJERIA’s “Raza Odiada West America Tour 2022” with GOATWHORE and UNIDAD TRAUMA are as follows:

Apr. 26 – Nile Theater – Mesa, AZ
Apr. 27 – Launchpad – Albuquerque, NM
Apr. 28 – Jake’s – Lubbock, TX
Apr. 29 – Scout Bar – Houston, TX
Apr. 30 – Come And Take It Live – Austin, TX
May 01 – Trees – Dallas, TX
May 02 – The Rock Box – San Antonio, TX
May 04 – Rockhouse – El Paso, TX
May 05 – The Rock – Tucson, AZ
May 06 – Alex’s Bar – Long Beach, CA
May 07 – Alex’s Bar – Long Beach, CA
May 08 – 1720 – Los Angeles, CA
May 10 – DNA Lounge – San Francisco, CA
May 11 – Goldfield Trading Post – Roseville, CA
May 12 – Strummer’s – Fresno, CA
May 13 – Virginia Street Brewhouse – Reno, NV
May 14 – Oxnard PAC – Oxnard, CA
May 15 – Transplants Brewing – Palmdale, CA

In June 2020, BRUJERIA released a digital single, “COVID-666”, via Nuclear Blast Records. It was accompanied by a quarantine-style music video for the title track, directed by Juan Brujo.

BRUJERIA’s most recent album, “Pocho Aztlan”, was the band’s first release since “Brujerizmo” came out in 2000 via Roadrunner. It was recorded over the course of many years and at several studios around the globe. The end result was mixed by Russ Russell (NAPALM DEATH, THE EXPLOITED).

The “Pocho Aztlan” title translates to “Wasted Promised Land,” a combination of Aztlán, the fabled ancestral home of the Aztecs, and the term pocho, which native Mexicans use to refer — not always kindly — to their counterparts born in the States. Frontman Brujo himself is a pocho, a man caught between two worlds. Many pochos are not exactly accepted with open arms in Mexico. Meanwhile, they’re too often regarded as second-class citizens in their adopted U.S. home. Brujo has transcended both scenarios through the power of BRUJERIA’s uncompromising grindcore and death metal. His all-Spanish lyrics are as vivid as they are effective: Bona fide tales from the frontlines of the drug war, the racial divide, and the battle for the border. “A lot of BRUJERIA songs are true stories,” Brujo said. “And if they haven’t happened yet, they will happen.”

In a 2017 interview with Myglobalmind, Brujo stated about Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border: “Well, things like that wall get me going, because it gets people to hate again. For the last 15 to 20 years, the hate was low. It was disappearing. Then Trump comes along, and everybody hates everybody. The blacks hate the whites, people driving cars on sidewalks, killing anti-fascist people. All that came back. I’m old enough to know what it was like in the ’60s and ’70s, and I see it coming back so fast.”

He continued: “I lived in the Los Angeles area my whole life, so I’ve seen it from the hippies all the way to now, and it got BRUJERIA active again. It gets me mad. I might end up in jail sooner or later, but it’s all good.”

Bring on the good cops; bring on the bad cops! It’s an early aughts metalcore face-off as we pit Shadows Fall’s Of One Blood against God Forbid’s Determination.
The post Fight Fire With Fire: ‘Of One Blood’ vs. ‘Determination’ appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

Geoff Tate will perform QUEENSRŸCHE’s 1994 album “Promised Land” in its entirety at his August 28 concert at Limelight Belfast 2 in Belfast, Ireland. Tate’s setlist will also include “a selection of his greatest hits from his legendary career,” according to an advertisement for the show.

In a recent interview with the “Thunder Underground” podcast, Tate touched upon the possibility of performing “Promised Land” from front to back, saying (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We did it when it first came out, but that was almost 30 years ago. I’d like to do that one [in its entirety], although it’s a bit of a dark album. I’m not sure that it would be a candidate for doing something like [that]. I might have to marry it with another album, ’cause it’s a bit — I don’t know — stark, a little bit introspective.

Asked if he had good memories of the making of “Promised Land”, Geoff said: “I have really definitive memories of it, actually. I’m not saying they’re all good memories, but there were some interesting times. We made the record under extreme circumstances. We hadn’t talk to each other in three years after we finished the ‘Empire’ tour, and the record company was knocking at the door for another record. And we knew we had to get in the studio to make one. None of us really wanted to be in the same room, but we had to do it. So I came up with this idea, ‘Well, let’s get everybody together on a remote island and we’ll all sit in one place for a few months and throw around a bunch of ideas and see what happens and maybe kind of get back to being a band again,’ like we were on maybe the first album. That didn’t work. [Laughs] We still went and did that plan, but I think the drummer, [Scott] Rockenfield, he stayed for two weeks. He got all his parts done and left. And then the same with Eddie [Jackson, bass]. He was there about a week; he got done and left. Michael [Wilton, guitar] did some parts. He was there about three weeks and left. And it was just Chris [DeGarmo, guitar] and me and our engineer for six months [laughs], staying on the island, making the record.

“It was good. It was interesting,” he continued. “I have good memories of being there. It was the kind of a situation like this where we lived in this log cabin on this remote island. We put the studio together. It took us a couple of different tries to get the studio to work, ’cause our first attempt kind of failed, putting all the gear together. But then we got the right setup set up, and then it was kind of magical. Being there in this remote place. The ocean was [very] close, and there was whales and seals and all kinds of wildlife. And it was quiet — really super quiet. So the only thing you heard was what was going on your head. So we took that, what was going on in our heads, and made music out of it.”

Pressed about whether he was surprised by the fact that “Promised Land” wasn’t as commercially successful as the two albums immediately preceding it, Tate said: “I’ve never been surprised. The ‘[Operation:] Mindcrime’ album was the one that caught us all off guard because we weren’t expecting it to be as big and popular as it got, ’cause it was really dark and very challenging for people. But we had just tremendous airplay and video play as well, with MTV. So it went from nothing to five hundred thousand — boom — and then it went to a million and then it went to two million… And then ‘Empire’ was a little bit more out of the box because the record company was really geared up and ready and had a really fantastic team of people that were promoting the record. And it definitely got a lot of airplay. ‘Promised Land’ didn’t get so much airplay, ’cause everything was shifting at that point in the record industry, so it was kind of left on its own. Although it sold 1.5 million albums — something like that — which is nothing to sneeze at.”

Tate previously shared his feelings on “Promised Land” in a 2015 interview with Classic Rock Revisited. He said at the time: “Well, I quite liked that record. It’s one of my favorite records that I’ve done. I just think there’s a lot of really interesting music on it. And I think of all the albums that we made up until ‘Promised Land’, it was the first one to capture a certain mood, overall, with the album, and stay in that mood, and not deviate a lot from song to song. It seemed to me at the time that the records we did previously, they were kind of sporadic in the… not sporadic — I don’t mean that to be negative, but just varied song choices and flow to the record, that kind of thing. Where ‘Promised Land’ had a certain feel to it. It’s kind of hard to define, but I would say that on it, we found a space, and we stayed there through the entire record, not deviating from that space too much. Which I liked; I like that kind of thing. It’s quite challenging to make something like that.”

Regarding how the three-year period of intensive touring between “Empire” and “Promised Land” affected the relationships between the QUEENSRŸCHE bandmembers, Geoff said: “Well, we never were like a really close group of people. But leading up to “Promised Land”, it was a tumultuous time with a lot of… well, like you said, a lot of touring, a lot of media attention, that kind of thing, which is a direct influence… it was actually what really influenced ‘Promised Land’. It was the whole premise of the record. The whole premise of the record was that as Americans, we’re really tuned into and trained to compete, and to win, and to accumulate things and goods, an accumulative position. Success is very important to Americans. And so I felt like we, as a band, had reached that pinnacle of success, that we had done and achieved all of the things that are sort of associated with being a musician. And so ‘Promised Land’ was a reflection on that. You know, “What does it all mean? Is it really that important? Is it very important? Is it something that… where do you go from there?” It’s almost like people think that success is this platform that you reach — and it really isn’t. It’s a never-ending ladder. It just keeps going and going and going; the ladder keeps going and you keep climbing and climbing. There’s never an end to it, you know? [Laughs]”

Tate’s recent tour celebrated the 30th anniversary of QUEENSRŸCHE’s “Empire” and “Rage For Order” albums.

Prior to that, Geoff celebrated the 30th anniversary of “Operation: Mindcrime” on European and U.S. tours.

Tate was fired from QUEENSRŸCHE in 2012 and was replaced by former CRIMSON GLORY singer Todd La Torre.

**NEW SHOW**

Geoff Tate’s Operation: Mindcrime return to Belfast on Sunday 28 August (Bank Holiday weekend) to play at…

Posted by SD Entertainment on Wednesday, February 23, 2022

If you were thinking about waiting to grab a “Metal & Beer” ticket to Metal & Beer Fest: Philly on June 10-11 , a word of advice: don’t
The post “Metal & Beer” Tickets for Metal & Beer Fest: Philly Over HALFWAY SOLD-OUT! appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

SpiritWorld mainman Stu Folsom recaps his band’s maiden voyage on the recently completed Decibel Magazine Tour.
The post A Spiritual Journey: SpiritWorld’s Stu Folsom’s Decibel Magazine Tour Diary appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

It may not be instantly obvious what a “grand electric skull” is, but by the end of the opening track on COBRA THE IMPALER’s debut album, most discerning listeners will definitely want one. This Belgian mob have the perfect post-millennial metal sound: thunderous, melodic and proudly progressive, it bears a strong enough resemblance to modern benchmarks (MASTODON in particular) to grab the attention of the metalhead majority, but with a bold identity of its own that points to a bright and fascinating future.

There is a strong whiff of mid-’90s, grunge-influenced metal lurking in these songs, and it adds to a diverse overall sound that marks COBRA THE IMPALER out as gentle eccentrics. With vocal harmonies that hit a smart midpoint between the haziness of TORCHE and the crisp, soulful finesse of KING’S X, this band have the confidence to thrust melodies into the foreground; and despite favoring the intricate over the straightforward, these songs are often disarmingly catchy as a result.

“Colossal Gods” itself is a shrewd entry point that showcases COBRA THE IMPALER’s pigeonhole-defying tendencies across five minutes of sandblasted and malformed stoner rock. “Blood Eye” is a feast of elegant transitions, from soaring vocal hooks and taut metal riffing, to windswept and wistful post-metal zone-out. “Spirit Of Lyssa” begins like a doped-out salute to IRON MAIDEN’s “Flash of the Blade”, before mutating into a juddering blend of post-GOJIRA crunch and VOIVOD-ian psych; “Scorched Earth” wallows in doomy squalor, armed with a gloriously morbid chorus and shades of PSYCHOTIC WALTZ’s lysergic prog-metal blueprint. Elsewhere, “Spawn Of The Forgotten” blends thrash-powered aggro with stately melodic melancholy, and “Demigods” is simply a very fine heavy metal song with a perverse streak a mile wide. Even more structurally familiar cuts like “Tempest Rising” and tastefully bleak closer “Mountains” crackle with creative sharpness and swagger.

Almost comically overburdened with great riffs and powerhouse vocal performances, “Colossal Gods” is a classy and characterful debut. The artwork is impressively bonkers, too.