Brujeria - "Brujerizmo" (Roadrunner)

To highlight the fact that Roadrunner hasn't gone totally alternarock, Mexico's ugliest bunch of metal bandits unleash possibly the heaviest album to come out of their roster since Machine Head's debut classic. With a monolithic guitar sound and pulsating rhythmic drive, 'Brujerizmo' will certainly heave the earth more than just a few times during its 36 minute duration.

With a rage and fury left unchecked, Brujeria have refined and honed their sound to create one of the most focused and utterly heavy albums of 2000. The enormous guitar crunch and lower-than-low bass stompings create reverberations to be felt miles away, and the machine-like drum patterns give way to those suspicions of a Fear Factory involvement. In short, this is a heavy, heavy album- and anyone who thinks otherwise is either born with less sensory perception than a rock or dead and decayed deep, deep underground ground.

All intentions of the band are encapsulated within the first few minutes- the opening title track leaves little to the imagination of what they're going to put you through in the rest of the album. Snarling and stalking like a crazed caged animal, Brujeria have ultimate demise imprinted irremovably on their mind. Whoever the constituents of this band they gel together to form an undeniably devastating unit of musical destruction. Led in their massacre by a ragged and torn throat this seven-man wrecking ball leaves the likes of Slipknot for dead.

Wasting no time Brujeria rage forward, the stomping 'La Traicion', the blast furnace 'Laboratorio Cristalitos' and the huge swinging gorge of 'Division Del Norte' taking heaviness to new dizzying heights. Following suit is the equally thumping 'Marcha De Odio', the driving 'Guiden A Los Ninos' and the apocalyptic 'Mecasario' complete with foreboding siren warnings. Every track is a hardened, sharpened weapon of metal annihilation, and when combined they hit home hard.

For all the heaviness and extremity however 'Brujerizmo' has equal parts groove and catchiness. Those huge pounding riffs are incredibly infectious, making some of the most astonishingly simple but effective hooks ever. Bouts of blasting are counteracted with pulverising heavy grooves, leaving a huge diversity in this album in the way of tempos and feels. Brujeria here really do have a mixed bag of styles- the bleeding throat vocals and innumerable blast beats will appeal to extreme fans whilst the colossal moshing grooves will draw in new-wave followers. Whatever the deal, 'Brujerizmo' will be big.

As far as major label releases go it hasn't come much better than this in the past few years. Legions who flock around the nu-metal types may think they know what makes heavy music, but until they get a dose of Brujeria they'll continue to live in ignorance. 'Brujerizmo' is a headstomper's delight.

Score- 9.5/10

Reviewed by: Kev Truong