The Heavy Metal Wanaka Podcast with Juan Bruja of Brujeria

WELCOME to the HEAVY METAL WANAKA PODCAST!!

In this Episode, JUAN BRUJO from BRUJERIA
TRANSCRIPT ADDED BELOW!!

Talking all about the band's FIRST album in 16years, "POCHO AZTLAN" due out 16th September 2016 on Nuclear Blast.

The band's sound is BRUTAL and EXTREME pitted against a DARK and SATIRICAL twist- all sung in Spanish.

In addition to JUAN BRUJO and other members dedicated to BRUJERIA, the band features some some FAMOUS names; SHANE EMBURY (Napalm Death), JEFFERY WALKER (Carcass), NICHOLAS BARKER (ex- Cradle of Filth, ex- Dimmu Borgir etc)

[audio /heavymetalwanaka/The_HMW_podcast_5.mp3]

TRANSCRIPT FOR THE INTERVIEW WITH JUAN BRUJO OF BRUJERIA!

How’s it going with you and the band at the moment?

Things are alright. It’s very busy trying to get everything together ready for the tour and things coming up with the record release and that kind of stuff. Things are busy- more than usual.

I see you’re kicking your tour off with the Ozzfest/Knotfest, that’s a pretty big score…

Well, yeah. I guess some band dropped off and we said we could take that space and they said yeah go ahead it’s your spot, so be kind of backed into that one just a couple of weeks ago. We’re going to kick it off with that one.

(tl:dr) stage persona’s come across as authentically scary, is this on purpose or am I overly sensitive?

It started off before that [release of album, “Brujerizmo”, 2000] it’s meant to scare Mexican fans and American people, it’s enough to scare everybody in the beginning because we never made it public that was never something we were going to do, lets tour and make some money. It was always like, we got to put these records out and nobody would know who we are and talk about the things that people don’t know about , throwing around what’s going on with the ugly side of things. That’s how it started and it just kept growing and growing getting more popular and then by the time you heard it was already more mainstream, like becoming more of a band that you would just tour. We started by doing shows and touring in 2003- was our first time we ever played live after 14years of being around, we finally played some live shows. They went well, the shows were exciting and people got excited, it turns out to be a big party- people leaving energized and positive. It turns out people fearing it’s going to be a bad thing, they’re wearing masks and machete on stage. It set up like that and then little by little it just turns into a big Mexican party where everybody’s happy, having a good time and that’s what we’ve been shoot for, what we’re trying to do in our shows and make sure everybody leaves happy and energized. It started out as meant to be scary, all the way, you tell me that and I’ll tell you that it worked and then as we’re playing live people are seeing that we’re not that bad of guys- it’s actually complete opposite of that they though. That’s always a good thing to convert people form where you were at 15 years ago to if you see our show and you like it and having experienced that was what we’re shooting for because it’s good spreading good news and thumbs up but when we do it live it’s a whole different feeling.

You include a lot of humour in your music, and don’t just perform as a band but put on a bit more of a show- did that come after a few live performances?

Yeah, we have four different singers, I’m the main singer and we have little dance parts, slow parts. Pretty much all the songs we do are stories [about] things that happen to people, things that we know about and we just put them in the music. There’s love songs in there, believe it or not, and we just act them out on stage, just act out little parts of the stories, over the whole thing isn’t a big deal but there’s some little parts we do our little skits to, like 30 seconds of notes, things like that. I guess it’s a little show, it’s entertaining and with the music it works out good, kind of explains what we’re talking about if you don’t know the language so it gets people fired up, it’s a good thing- like it’s not people fighting or stuff like that, everybody’s having a good time because they can tell that we’re partying up on stage, that it’s all good, we have happy songs too. It’s hidden, we’ll have a double meaning, it’ll say something bad but you’ll heard some guy laughing at what’s being translated. If you look at the Spanish, every song has a little funny part to it, so turns up to a party, doing all the songs and having those parts to it, people get a good laugh out of it- turns out to be a positive thing actually, so I’m proud of that part. Hopefully we get to go down there and show you, if we play down there and you check it out for yourself and see what you think. You’d be a perfect example of what would happen, I think the people right away are all you guys are bad and scary blah blah blah then the show’s a whole different thing, the sounds a whole different vibe.

[Pocho Azlan is your] first album in 16years, I understand there were some label problems but you’d worked on some previous material, now with this album was it done fresh or is some of it pre-existing material?

The problems were more like the guy who was going to mix it had surgery on his back, that got it delayed a year. That’s the problems we had- this guy was going to do that but it didn’t work: delayed another 6 months, things going on. We tried to record it one way, we heard it and didn’t like it, we had to re-record- things like that going on all the time. No one was in a hurry, they were like we’ll just do it next time we’re all together, everything you could think of happened, and it kept getting delayed and delayed. But we worked with the label, and the lable didn’t try to change anything or cover it up or anything like that, everything’s good. It’s not that bad, it’s not really anything bad, they have a good sense of humor because there are funny things in there- double meaning type stuff so there was no label delay is was all good- it was other things happening that delayed the crap out of everything.

Are the ideas and feelings you explored 16 plus years ago the same type you’re exploring now?

Each one of our records will have a certain songs about certain subjects, each one we try to update , like one thing would be some people going to the United States illegally. As time goes by we give an update with each record- here’s where it’s at, this is what’s going on, and the drug dealing part and all that, we give updates. We’ve based songs on certain issues and other things like religion, a couple of religion songs thrown in there. We try to tell stories in songs, people than have had things, people tell stories, stories that are interesting. Mexican music, even the country music in Mexico, polka- the accordion, the german style country songs, that’s telling stories about what’s going on. Another part of Mexico is suppose to be all drug dealing and all that so the drug lord songs get played so we try to do our version of that in a metal of way, a metal version of that, of those stories. A lot of our songs are the stories that we hear an account and it’s another way to get the subjects out there and talk about things, getting ideas out there and stuff.

(tl:dr) comment on old song Don Quixote Marijuana

It actually started before that with a song call ‘Marijuana’ just ‘Marujuana’ we ripped off a cover of the Macarena song, the original Macarena and called it ‘Marijuana’, it’s all Spanish and ~hey Marijuana~. It’s to promote Marijuana make it legal in the states, like it’s not so bad as people think so do a little parody song like that about weed. The second version was the Don Quixote one you heard-a little disco metal thing that we put on some compilation just as a thing together the Marijuana, it actually did pretty big in Mexico. The Macarena song was huge in Spain, and this one was huge in Mexico for some reason, and the whole things is trying to loosen up people on the idea that marijuana isn’t evil and a bad drug, to help the legalize weed thing. That’s what those songs are, there’s two of them out there. If you haven’t looked at the Macarena one I recommend you look at that  and see what you think of that one