Our favourite Latin-metal bandDe La Tierra have just mentioned that they’re going to come to Australia! FrontmanAndreas Kisser recently caught up withLoudwire to talk about the bands debut self-titled album that was released at the start of this year, why they sing in Spanish and Portuguese and their touring plans for the rest of the year (which include Australia!)

First thing I saw even before hearing the album was the Maldita Historia video. Great song, could you talk about that track?

Yeah, that song is ummm its a track that Alex Gonzlez he wrote on the first demos. It came from one of his demos, and Andres later arranged some parts with new riffs, and vocals, and then finally we all arranged the song in practice, together. Playing together and stuff, and thats the result of Maldita Historia, so uhh, I think we chose Maldita because its not the heaviest song on the album, its more like mid tempo and stuff. And its maybe not really the most extreme from the album first, you know? Now were doing the second video tape for San Asesino, which is a song that mixture, you know the English and Portuguese on the same song, and its a little bit more heavier, more in your face, and theres lots of the elements there you know, reggae and stuff, its good to hear a Mexican drummer with a Portuguese bass player playing samba, you know? Its amazing, its amazing spice that you have there, and of course you create something new there. The video is almost done, so in a few weeks I think, together with a tour in South America were going to put it out.

Is there a favorite song on this album, and why it stands out to you?

Ive got to say I really love them all, I think the first one, Somos Uno, its very special. A song from Andres Gimenez, he wrote the music and he wrote the lyrics as well. And it talks about that, not only about the band, that we are united regardless of the cultural feedback or background. In a band like De La Tierra, coming from metal, from ska, from punk rock, you know all playing metal there together, and at the same time it shows that South America, Central America, North America, its kind of the same, you know? Its like one big community, Latin community that is huge. And we all have more in common than we can imagine, you know, so I think the first song on the album, that really opens it up, is the most special one for me, right now at least.

[De La Tierra] got together for the love of heavy metal. Can you talk a bit about coming together on that idea and then the decision to record your disc in Spanish and Portuguese?

I think the idea to sing in Spanish / Portuguese was most appealing. That was a challenge of it all, to do something like that. Our own languages that we could express ourselves more naturally, and also something new and something different that we want to do. Again, to make heavy metal, to do metal music and do heavy s, we used the same tuning the low tuning. But you know the mixture we had between musicians create the sound, you know? Actually, Flavio, the bass player who is not a metal bass player, he plays like ska and more like hardcore music. Hes bringing something very new to the style, hes no ordinary metal bass player. Hes bringing some slaps, and two hands techniques that you dont even see in a metal bass player, you know? The thing is the most original stuff that are creating something new from, of course me and Andreas we write this stuff for metal for years. Its much more natural and easy for us, and Alex is a metal head, he plays metal very naturally. So as far as the elements, they are bringing some real original ideas and riffs playing to the style in general you know, so, its pretty cool.

What does the future hold for you?

Lots of metal. [laughs] I think a trip, its like Sepultura really have like a nice schedule ahead, and we have all the important summer festivals in Europe to do. And the possibility that De La Tierra and Sepultura will do shows together as well, you know? I dont think that would be impossible to think about that, so maybe some shows together in the summer, we head to Australia, weve got to do some shows in Brazil. You know we just want to get to go everywhere, we celebrating 30 years of Sepultura this year, you know so. Very special dates. We like to go everywhere and celebrate, you know, thats it.

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