Artist: BRUJERIA
Album: POCHO AZTLAN VINYL (2LP BLACK)

Release date: 2016
EAN/UPS: 727361344412
Media type: LP

Pocho Aztlan is the band’s first release since Brujerizmo was released 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). BRUJERIA’s legend has proliferated for nearly three decades.

When the band first emerged from the sunbaked hellscape of Los Angeles in 1989, the city was on the brink of chaos. Daryl Gates ruled the LAPD with an iron fist, overseeing a legion of blue-suited stormtroopers who cracked brown and black skulls at every opportunity. Rodney King, the ’92 riots, and CA governor Pete “Pito” Wilson’s anti-immigrant Prop 187 were all on the bleak horizon. The Mexican-American agitators of BRUJERIA captured the mood of the city’s minorities with the band’s infamous and widely banned 1993 debut, Matando Güeros (“Killing White People”), quickly becoming the Spanish-language counterparts to early grindcore masters TERRORIZER and NAPALM DEATH. Led by lyricist and mastermind Juan Brujo, BRUJERIA were alternately rumored to be satanic drug lords and members of well-established metal bands. The truth, as always, lay somewhere in between.

Fast forward to right about now: Pocho Aztlan is BRUJERIA’s first new album in 16 years. The 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. Brujo himself is 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 US 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 says. “And if they haven’t happened yet, they will happen.”


Side A:

01. Pocho Aztlan
02. No Aceptan Imitaciones
03. Profecia Del Anticristo

Side B:

01. Angel De La Frontera
02. Plata O Plomo
03. Satongo

Side C:

01. Isla De La Fantasia
02. Bruja-
03. Mexico Campeon
04. Culpan La Mujer

Side D:

01. Codigos
02. Debilador
03. California Über Aztlan

BRUJERIA is:

Juan Brujo l Vocals
Fantasma l Vocals, Bass
Hongo l Guitar, Drum Programming
El Cynico l Bass, Guitar, Vocals
Hongo Jr. l Drums
Pinche Peach l Vocals, Samples
Pititis l Female Vocals
A Kuerno l Guitar
Sangron l Backup Vocals
Guero III l Backup Vocals