Formed as a side-project of members from Fear Factory, Napalm Death and Faith No More, Brujeria is the kind of band that is a bit spoilt if you’re in on the joke. Ostensibly, this is the daily playlist for a gang of Satan-worshipping Mexican drug barons, songs about killing blonde-haired Americans, molesting dead children, and, erm, crossing the border the deal of the day, and from a casual look at the cover and lyrics it’s hard not to blame the places that banned the album. Yet when you spend time with the album, it’s equally hard to see quite how it fooled so many. The intro skit to the album, Pura De Venta, is a drug deal gone wrong, some foolish güero questioning the purity of the product and getting a machete through the gut for his trouble, the dumb cabron. Leyes Narcos continues, opening lyrics as follows: ‘Pendejos! No se juega con las leyes de los narcos-satanicos’ (roughly translated: ‘Shitheads! Do not mess with the rules of Satanic drug-runners!’) and if you’re drunk and have the translated lyrics in front of you, then Matando Güeros is an absolute blast.

If you’re not and you don’t, it becomes distinctly less fun, and really I fully advise keeping this album for that situation alone. Then you can revel in the likes of the title track (‘killing white boys – long live the race!’) and Seis Seis Seis’ speedy grindcore (‘meanwhile I eat the brains of a virgin white boy/my father Satan is giving me kisses’) and Cruza La Frontera (‘don’t pay the coyotes, they are fucking thieves/they leave you lost, the border patrol fucks you – Satan cares more’) and Grenudos Locos (‘play this record if you have balls/radio doesn’t give a shit, their music sucks dick’) amongst others. Yet if you don’t have the lyrics, the primitive Death/Grind here is still rather good, even instrumental track Chinga Tu Madre worth listening to. The playing is sloppy and all over the place, drummer Grenudo/Raymond Herrera barely recognisable from the difference here to his usual technical precision, and guitarists Dino Cazares and Billy Gould (Asesino and Guero Sin Fe respectively) far from their typical sounds. This album features two bassists, Hongo/Shane Embury and Fantasma/Pat Hoed, and that really contributes to the album’s bottom-end sound, overwhelmingly murky and dark.

The version of the album I have also came with the Machetazos demo, making for a 19-song blast; later releases from Brujeria would be markedly different in sound, but as a debut Matando Güeros is great, one of those fun little albums that the majority of Metalheads probably haven’t heard of. There’s been rumours of a new album from Brujeria for a while (the line-up now including Carcass' Jeff Walker) so what better time to check the band’s past out? If you have a sense of humour and live, breath and eat Death Metal, then Brujeria should be well-known to you.