How is this new tour going ?

The Tour is good, we play like 4 festivals, you know lets say on the weekends, its fun you know coming out here doing big festivals. Thats something new for us, we don’t tour that much, never have, so it’s good to come to these shows. You know, on the main stage it’s kind of surprising for us. It’s a good thing!

Is this your first European Tour or you already did another one before?

We did a couple, like 4 shows in february. In London and a couple in Italy, just to see what happens, and it was really good shows. Really surprising that people like, turned out and stuff. Then these festivals came you know. We don’t have a manager, we don’t have a booking agency but soon, as we get these shows. I do all the booking, they call somebody, get my email "Hey you wanna do a show?" “Ya! lets go alright, lets go!”. It’s fun though, we like to play for people who never seen us.

It seems that the reaction of the fans is incredible, You’ve sold a huge amount of merch...

Ya! (Laughing) We sell our own we go we like to sell our merch to the people, like meet us and stuff and with the mask on (Laugh).
Thats a great thing, I like being with the people a lot. Like the other guys in the band I go "Come on, you go with me! But they go, don’t think they like it. (Laugh)
But not even if there not fans like that, its different. Our music, the whole thing is different. It’s not just like metal you know, it’s a little different you know.
I think its a good thing, it’s fun, we have fun, so everybody else has fun.

It seems that the line-up since the "Brujerizmo" record changed a bit...

Guys left, Güero Sin Fe (Billy Gould), Asesino (Dino Cazares), Greñudo (Raymond Herrera)... they left the gang, they’re scared of me or something, they just leave, they hate me. I dont know what happens.
I’m the bad guy, so they quit... whatever.

Well who’s in the band actually?

Hongo (Shane Embury)'s been in for a long time, And then El Cynico (Jeff Walker), I’ve known him since 1999 or something. The only one thats new is El Podrido (Adrian Erlandsson), the drummer. He's a friend of a El Cynico so he came on you know. But all the other guys, I known them forever a long long time.

We know that there was some problem between Raymond and Dino, but they both left the band. You don’t know why?

One said "If Dino’s in the band, I’m out! ", and the other said "If Raymond’s in the band, I’m out! "... So they both left (Laughs).
They wanna control it and do it their way, and their way is like bussiness and I don’t do business, I have fun, you saw it, it’s fun, all the guys have fun so it’s great!
They wanna do it like with a record company, a manager... I said "ah fuck you! ". I don’t know what that is, Brujeria's my only band. It’s the only band I’ve ever done. I don’t know about record companys and all that stuff, we just have fun.

And what about Billy Gould?

Ya! Billy said "If Dino’s in the band, I leave!", and he left. And all these guys said if Dino’s in the band they leave, so they left, and then Dino quits, right when it starts getting.

But you seem to have some great new band members right now...

Ya they've always been there, these guys we were touring with were always in the studio. Since the first records so they’ve been around for awhile, so it’s good to have these guys here and having fun now. Jeff he hasnt done metal for like 10-12 years. And when we said "Lets go on tour!", he said "Oh ya lets go! Ya lets go!". (Laughs) So its good to see him back doing the bass thing. And he likes it, you see him out there with the cowboy hat and it’s a good thing for him, and it works. Ya I’m glad everyone has fun.

Well can you tell us more about the original concept of the band because we heard a lot of stories...

At the beginning, all our friends wanted to make a hardcore band but different, in spanish but do it right. Back then there was nothing like us in spanish, not even hard rock, not even metal. So we came out with hard metal and real brutal lyrics that never been heard of over there and just killed. Like people either heard it and they hated it or loved it right away but it didnt matter if your a metal fan if you’re spanish or mexican. You’ll get reaction no matter what, so everybody in Mexico knows our show. Cops you know, the president "Oh Brujeria!". It’s like everybody know us. (Laughs)

Is that one more reason you don’t come in Europe very often?

No we just started touring like 3 years ago, we never toured before cuz of everybody. We do the records and then they go on tour with their other band. Their bands at the ring gets big and famous you know with MTV, and I don’t seem ‘em again. So they join Brujeria, they get big and famous and then they go away. And I’m like this "What happen?". But now I got the guys who wanna tour and stuff so we’re doing that first. Looks like w’ere gonna make another record cuz people want it so we’ll do it. Let see what happens...

Did you create that band to shock people in a way?

Ah ya! People are scared of all these things like "Oh you can’t sing about el'diablo and things like that". "Oh ya you can!" (Laugh) So after us ton of bands came trying to copy us and it started a whole movement like all mexico is all ruined now with all metal dark metal and all this stuff that comes out now. It’s like it opened a big door like, knocked it down, so its good, good for that.

What’s your opinion about the Governments in South America in general like in Brazil, Columbia...

Well I concentrate on Mexico you know, that’s my thing. We dont sing about south america, only about the drug dealings that we deal with you know but other then that I don’t get involved with what’s not mine. So its mainly Mexico and stuff. United States boarder Mexico thats hot area thats good one. South america countries are on their own you know, let Sepultura sing about Brazil. If they haven’t or of they don’t, somebody will, sooner or later.

As you said, Mexico is very close to the US...

... Its right on the United states boarder, lot of mexicans come cross the United States illegally to get a better job you know, they got poor in Mexico. So that’s a million people crossing over all the time. Now the US is like half mexican. It’s like the half of the United States’ army is mexican. They say lets go to war with Mexico, the army won’t fight. It’s like Mexico's a free country now and they got United states to protect them... cuz all the armys mexican...

... And the US government built a wall...

Some racist white people wanted to make a wall but all the mexicans do is go there and do jobs like cutting the grass, you know simple jobs that they'd like to do.
And you know everyone needs a mexican over there, without mexicans the countrys like shit. They’re would be no army cuz the army is more then half mexican, they’re all hispanic. There the ones who wanna go fight you know, what i mean its like pretty crazy out here but the whole country getting with latinos and hispanics, it’s all mixed together now. Before it wasn’t. 20 years ago when we started doing Brujeria, it was like mexicans, black, white,... you know it was like that. We did a record “Matando Gueros” which means “killing white boys” you know we put his head on the cover, people were scared, were in shock back then... Now its like people are laughing at it, but back then it was serious that was what existed, it was a really bad thing, it was bad to be mexican back then.

What’s your opinion about Bush politics?

Politics doesn’t matter to me but if they start talking about the boarder and fucking mexicans then we get involved. And um like our Pito Wilson song is about the governer of california. I was at a grammy party because one of our members got nominated for grammy with another band so we went and they had the governer and he was speaking at the grammys "Aaah calafornia hollywood industry" whatever... then later on, I was walking in the crowd and I come the other way and all of a sudden look up the crowd and the governer was right in front of me and he looks at me like this, turns around and covers his wife. I was the only mexican at the whole party, I was the only brown skin mexican guy at the whole party so when he sees me, he turns around covers his wife to protect her.
6 months later he has a law which takes all benefits, all free state benfits, takes it away from mexicans and they passed the law. Well he covered his wife from me, he passed the law, he's a racist! He's not a politician! So we beat Pito Wilson, in the first song of the second record, that's the kind of politics we do. I know the guy, I met him so I know what he is and I won't sing about something I don't know. He's the guy who does the part, the campaign to run for governer, he does Arnold Schwarzenneger and Pito Wilson’s is still around and he’s really a hardcore racist. When I met him, he can't say nothing, he would of course but he can’t.
If you listen to that song first song second record you’ll see... On that song, Jello Biaffra is Pito Wilson, we ask him to be Pito Wilson, and asked “Why???” “So we could kill you!!!”(Laughs) That was funny...

About your discography, "Brujerizmo” was a lot different than your other records?

Yeah, for that record we let Dino and Raymond do what they want. Fear Factory was big at that time so we let them do what they want and see where it goes, and we did it their way. It was ok, it was a good record but it changed a little bit but to me, it was too much work. For our first records we just went to the studio to record, we had nothing, we never practiced, we just showup in the studio record and write the songs the same day. So our first record was done in one day, and the second record went really fast. “Matando Gueros” cost us about $800, it took 3 to 4 days to do it and that includes writing them and recording them mixing and everything... And the next one was like $2000 about a week, week and half and then it looks like a real record.

Yeah we can really feel the influence Dino & Raymond had the record, It sounds very Factory on the guitars and the drumes...

Yeah it's like the songs they didn’t used with Fear Factory as they weren't good enough to use so they wanted to use them with Brujeria. The vocals made a big difference in spanish, the whole thing’s different. But that’s a good record. It's real! You just saw us playing live and it's real! We're singing about real things and we're having fun. It's like get a bunch of guys from some studio somewhere, it's not like that.

And do you plan to release a new one soon?

We're gonna try, we're gonna see what happens, you know it's hard for these records to get out now beacause we have all these guys leaving and fighting, it's not me! They get in, they get famous and they leave...

Are you going to work with Roadrunner do you think for the next one?

Nahh, we got off Roadrunner after the second record and they licensed the third one, that was a lot of money so they were ok. But you know I want to put it out myself with my record company and sell it on ebay... It'll be like that, I'll be the guy mailing them, shipping, doing it all myself... We're the only band that can do that, we're the only that can sell a lot of records without a record company ot distributor now, I know we are! No one else can just come out and do it, we’re already established and known, we could do something like that, and big record comapny would be scared, “Oh these guys have sold a lot of records ebay, and on their own website...”. You know it'll kill it.

Do you see hardcore bands in south america rising?

It's hard, beacuse a lot of them are just copying and nothing's from the heart, it's not real! I don't like any of this music, I tried but there’s no heart...
But our next record it's either going to be underground from ourselves or gotta be a big Universal Record’s deal, one or the other. But we'll see what happens. People will say “sell out” but I can't sell out... We'll see what happens.

But you didn’t have any contact with any record company?

There's one guy (Gustavo Santaolalla) on our spanish record company, he’s a big producer in latin america but he never had a band hit in the United States that sold a lot. This guy won a grammys, he won an oscars for the “Brokeback Mountain” soundtrack, he’s big guy, he's done all the big records, and if he wants to do it with us, we'll do it with him, beacuse that might be the one that sells a lot in the United States that he's never done. All his records are platinum in latin america countries, but in the US it’s 100,000, 200,000, and millions everywhere else. So we might be the band who could do that in the United States, it might work together. If it's not, that’s going to be ourselves you kow with ebay “highest bidder...” (Laughs)
I did do some dvd's I burned myself from shows, like me playing, smoking weed, palying football, I sold it for ten or fifteen dollars at shows, and on Ebay one goes to two hundred dollars, I number them “one, two, three, four, five...”, I was going to make 666 but my dvd burner broke at 200 that's it! (Laughs) 200 man that's it, no more!
You know it's pretty fun to do that stuff, it's interesting to see that people value goes up like that, it's hard to find a lot of stuff I do, I hide it, it's there but you got to find it, it's like not easy hahaha. There's fans that despise whatever comes out next on Roadrunner and there's people who want to know who that Brujeria guy is and it's like you keep looking and you find all the stuff and you never know.hahaha That's a great thing!

And do you have any funny story...?

A lot of funny stories are on the record. One time we were going to tj with Dino with the hookers and one of the band members went for like twenty dollars, twenty dollar hooker, then Dino comes and a guy picks a girl, he looks at me, I give him twenty, he gives them back to me, I give him back twenty, Dino gave twenty and he said “No, No ,No forty!”. He doubled the price and so there's a song about that “Diez para nosotros veinte para gordo”, “Ten for us twenty for the fat guy”. But all those things that happen are all the songs, all the songs are real stories. I use stuff like that, and you guys won't really understand as it is spanish, but we try to translate, it's not kind of slang things, but most of those stories are true like the Pito Wilson, "Colas De Rata" is about doing coke and all our records are done you know for partying, so we got all the hardcore parties in the band they come our way eventually pretty fun but if you want all the true stories, they are all in the songs, there's too many other ones to tell you .
Yeah we have fun, when I'm around, people are having fun and partying. You'll see i'm just starting right now... (Laughs)

Any strange thing with any government or something?

Oh yeah! We get on tv, some songs are made like if we ever get on TV. These guys stop making music, we write songs so when they want to do that they play that song like they want to go after and say “These guys are horrible” and the song they'll play come out on TV and there comes the song with the lyrics, they're putting up the lyircs, like molesting dead children... That's a song we did. They use it all the time on Tv to talk bad about us but it works for us, like these guys kill people whatever... (Laughs) We do have a bunch of things happen a lot back when the early days when it was still unknown, no internet, it was really hard, but you'll see some videos that come out. On the spanish TV they got some guy that looks like the “Matando Gueros” cd, the head. They killed a guy, took his head off, and it looked like that guy and they were “Oh we're gonna arrest these guys for killing this guy”, and that cd came out like five years ago (Laughs)
It was like some guys were arrested for making flyers with the head and the guy that they killed looked like the guy with the head and they asked “You guys killed that guy in your flyers!?”
They went to jail for murder but that's just a cover of some cd that came out. That is crazy!
You’ll look around, you’ll look on youtube and I think you'll find our video, you'll see like a news cast things about that.”these records should not be sold in stores...” All that stuff , all that publicity is built to get people listening things like that happen because we always promoted ourselves, record companies don't know how to sell because it's in spanish, so we always do it oursleves, it was underground...

So your plans for the next month?

Next week we’ll start writing new stuff, we have a festival next week, With Full Force, so we got a week of writing and see what happens and it's either going to be oursleves independent or with a big Universal Records’ deal i think, who knows? But you know it's going to be a big deal but we're not going to change but you'll see, you guys will tell me if I change and you see me it goes like that alright? You guys will tell me.

You have any special message to tell for our readers?

Just rock it, Be fuckin’ metal, fucking have fun doing what you're doing, if it's not fun, don't do it, if not worth it, don't do it, get out of it! That's it!

Interview Manu & O.S
Translation Sophia Coss