Tag Archives: Asesino

The lost art of not understanding shit

Seemingly everyone on the internet speaks, understands or at least knows a bit of English. I don’t have any stats to back this up, but I think it’s safe to say that the rise of the internet has helped a lot of people learning said language. I know it has helped me a lot.

I’m not a native English speaker myself, and besides the internet there is something else that has helped me improve my English. Music. “What the hell are these guys singing about?” was a question I’ve asked myself quite often when I was younger. So I grabbed a dictionary and started translating lyrics by bands I’ve loved. Pretty disappointing in some cases (note that I’ve grown up in the middle of the Nu Metal boom).

Improving my English, and understanding lyrics, made me lose something else though. The naivety of judging songs by their sound, rather than their lyrical content. Judging singers by their ability to sing, rather than their ability to write coherent sentences.

Obviously I’m judging singers by their singing qualities, or lack thereof, but it’s hard to take someone serious if he writes like Fred Durst, even if he sounded like Bruce Dickinson. Singing and writing belongs together, just like playing guitar and writing your own riffs. If you’re only doing half of these things yourself, I consider you less of a musician.

But back to my youth. When I was a teenager and I’ve loved a song, I naturally sang along to it. Even if I didn’t know what was actually being sung. I went with the sounds of words, rather than the actual words. This is difficult to understand for our English speaking readers, because you’re used to having music that is performed in English. English speaking music has been dominating the music world for decades. But think of it like this: if you really like a certain Rammstein song, you go to catch Rammstein live and they play that very song, you want to sing along to it. Even if you don’t understand German. So you just go with what you think is being sung and sing it. It doesn’t have to be right, it just has to sound right.

Losing that non-knowledge can be a downside, if you’re listening to badass music with dumbass lyrics. In trying to regain that naivety, I’ve started to listen to a bunch of bands with non-English lyrics, for example Asesino – who feature lyrics in Spanish. I know that Cristo Satánico (Asesino’s 2nd album) has some kind of badass storyline, and I know that ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ is about some guy fucking his girlfriend’s mother, but I don’t care.

I don’t care because I love Cristo Satánico for its music. I love it because Maldito X (Tony Campos – pictured above) has a killer voice for Deathgrind, something I’ve never expected when he was still the bassist for Static-X. I don’t give a crap what he’s singing about because it might disappoint me and make me appreciate the album less.

I’m happy with my naivety. I do appreciate good lyrics, but sometimes I just don’t want to listen to the words but rather the music as a whole. And that’s easier when you don’t speak the language.

And with that being said, click the more button for some ear candy. Enjoy your naivety.

Asesino album news and epic tales

In late March, Asesino vocalist/bassist Tony Campos told us that the band were writing their third album. As a fan of Asesino, I was really happy to hear that and now imagine how happy it made me when I read a new interview with Dino Cazares talking about the third album, tentatively titled El Segunda Venida (= The Second Coming).

“We have the new album, which will be out in 2012. (…) So we’re thinking of calling the record ‘The Second Coming,’ which is ‘El Segunda Venida.’ Even though it’s our third album, it’s more based on the second coming of Christ (…).”

Read more here.

I advise you to read the complete interview because Dino explains the concept behind Asesino and the first two albums in its entirety. It’s pretty fucking epic. I’m still wondering how ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ fits into that concept though.

Interview: Tony Campos (Prong, Possessed, Asesino)

Tony Campos looks like a mean guy but he’s actually really nice, not to forget that he’s a great bassist and vocalist.

Tony plays (and played) in lots of bands, including Ministry, Dia de Los Muertos, Attika, Possessed, Asesino, Otep, Buck Satan & the 666 Shooters, Prong and the band he started his career with: Static-X.

Check out my interview with him, where we talked about Asesino, his involvement with Possessed and his epic beard after the jump.

Video of the Week: Asesino

A couple of masked Mexicans, what could this be? Lucha Libre Wrestling? No, Tony Campos (vocals and bass), former bassist of Static-X, Dino Cazares (guitars), of Fear Factory, and Emilio Márquez (drummer), formerly of Possessed, form Asesino. A Deathgrind band that simply kicks ass.

Cazares used to play with Brujeria and when he left the band, he started Asesino, a band in the same vein. As in Brujeria, all members of Asesino use pseudonyms, Cazares is Asesino, as he was in Brujeria, Campos is Maldito X and Márquez is Sadístico and featured on this song is none other than El Odio… who? Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed. He’s not in the video but he sings backing vocals on the song above, ‘Regresando Odio’. Enjoy.

Metal wake-up service

Good morning. It’s 8 in the morning, where I’m at. I don’t know where you’re at, how could I but it must be morning somewhere else aswell. And if it’s not morning, where you’re at, at the moment, maybe it’s in the middle of the night and when you wake up, you find this shit attempt of an article and wonder just what the fuck that idiot wrote there.

So anyhow, I decided not to go to sleep a couple of hours ago because I don’t have to work until Wednesday so here I am, waiting for the supermarket next door to open, so I can buy a couple of cans of Red Bull. Or any other energy drink for that matter. And is there a better way to keep yourself awake than listening to some of the heaviest shit you got in your iTunes playlist? No. So I wondered, just what is the heaviest shit I got in my playlist?

Make the jump for the heaviest Metal I got to offer, all in alphabetical order or, as I’d like to call it, the Monday Morning Metal list.