JM Dopico Interview – Noxious Ruin Vol.7
Hails Dopi, thank you for taking the time to share your history with the Noxious Ruin readers. You have been around the extreme music scene for over 30 years and I’m sure a lot of younger readers are unfamiliar with your history of influential bands. Let’s jump in to the interview:
MACHETAZO
-Take us back to the beginning.. How did you get into metal and extreme music? Were you playing an instrument before it happened?
Hails Brian, thanks to you too. Guess I got into metal and extreme music cos' I've been an outcast and a weirdo since a very early age, when I discovered rock'n'roll and its aesthetics of rebellion I fell in love with it immediately. I got into music in 1982/83 with a Barón Rojo “Volumen Brutal” tape and watching Iron Maiden videos on TV, I was 10 years old, I remember almost crying with emotion when I saw “The Trooper” vid. Afterwards I got some more heavy metal like Judas Priest, Venom, Motörhead, AC/DC, Kiss, Ozzy... until 1986 when I got Metallica “Master Of Puppets” and Slayer “Hell Awaits”, then went deep into the thrash / hardcore scene with Exodus, Kreator, The Accüsed, Recipients Of Death, Nuclear Assault, Whiplash, Suicidal Tendencies, Sodom, Misfits, Celtic Frost, D.R.I., Septic Death, No Mercy, S.O.D., Ludichrist, Excel, Dead Kennedys, C.O.C., English Dogs, Carnivore, etc, etc, etc. 1988 was the year I started to buy as many records as possible (sometimes stealing them in the big malls) and the first wave of death metal and grindcore was born; Death, Autopsy, Obituary, Morbid Angel, Entombed, Napalm Death, Carcass and Terrorizer were the bands that changed my musical perception forever and made me want to play in a band. So I got an electric guitar for my 15th birthday and started to make some noise, unfortunately for my family and neighbors.
-Being from Spain, was it more difficult to find extreme music or other people/musicians that wanted to play it?
No, it wasn't difficult to find extreme music at all. I had a small crew who had the same musical interests, some kids I met at school, one of them is Suici, who now plays in Leprophiliac with me. I had some tape trading contacts across the country too and also there were a couple of record stores in my town, both were pretty good, lots of import records and also ran by cool dudes who even recorded tapes for us when we were too broke to buy any LP. But finding people interested in playing extreme music was difficult, only me and like other four guys were playing instruments interested in extreme stuff. The rest of the young musicians I knew were more into classic rock or punk.
-Tell us about your first band(s) and how those led to the formation of Frustradiccion?
My first band was Necrosis and I played guitar. It was an absolute mess where we had like three shitty songs ours and then a lot of covers of Sodom, Napalm Death, Eskorbuto and La Polla Records. Necrosis existed only for some months in 1990, we played a show at a school party and then disbanded, hahaha... Then I switched from guitar to drums cos' one day at a practice room I realized I definitely could play drums without problem and totally fell in love with the instrument. So I formed a band named Distorsión Krónika, later changing name to Frustradicción. That was around 1991 and things got “serious”, lots of rehearsals every week and pretty soon we played live quite often. In 1992 we released a demotape and started to play out of town, I remember going to Madrid to play a beyond awesome show with Ruido De Rabia. In 1994 we recorded two songs for a 7” that wasn't released until 1995 by Qabalah Prods, -a record label ran by the then drummer of Avulsed-, and that long wait really fucked up our mood a lot. I don't like the demo, but the 7” is something unique, we mixed brutal stuff like Suffocation with industrial grind like Napalm Death and Godflesh. But right after the 7” things went downhill when the stupid techno music / drugs trend started cos' half band got hooked on it, that was very frequent back in the day here, lots of metal punks abandoned the scene to get into that shit, people with no integrity or attitude.
-Did you and Chinin form Machetazo while you were in Frustradiccion? Why did Frustradiccion split up?
Yes, I was still in Frustradicción but I formed it with Miguel, not Chinín. Miguel was a very young guy (15 I think?) who used to hang out with us all the time at the semi-abandoned house where we practiced. We used to stay there until really late at night listening crazy shit like Seven Minutes Of Nausea, Anal Cunt and the beyond awesome Gut “Spermany's Most Wanted” 7” while we smoked tons of hashish. One of those nights in 1994 we decided to form our own noise grind project, and Machetazo was born. As I said before Frustradicción was already starting to fall apart, some of the members were losing interest in extreme music so the frequent line-up problems were a pain in the ass. At the end it was only me and one guitar player from the original line-up, then he decided to move to London so we broke up the band, I think it was 1997 or 1998. It's a pity we left a lot of songs unrecorded, we could have made a full album I think, we had some great stuff very influenced by Brutal Truth “Need to control” and Fear Factory first album.
-Machetazo had a far more brutal and noisy sound than Frustradiccion, was this the reason you formed the band and switched to playing guitar?
At the beginning it was just noisecore grind to get high and have some fun. As I was already playing drums in another band, I wanted to play guitar. If I tell you the truth I don't remember any reason at all, everything was an spontaneous decision after another, always induced by a complete blurred mind of a 21 years old stoner.
-The first Machetazo release was the 46 Cabezas Aplastadas Por Un Yunque Oxidado demo in 1995, looking back now, how do you feel about this as an opening statement from the band. What was the feedback from others like?
I think it's still fuckin' great! We had a lot of crazy practices in 1994, I don't remember much cos' we were always partying and the house was full of buddies going nuts all the time. Finally in 1995 one of the guys who was studying sound engineering got a four track tape recorder at school and we made the demo. We recorded the 46 songs in one evening, it was so much fun, I remember recording the spoken words for the intros from a VHS player, but without TV, so imagine that, listening films to catch the words, haha... crazy bastards. We self released 50 TDK tapes with a glorious cut & paste cover, everybody loved the tape and two years later Ironia Recs got in touch to reissue it on 100 pro-tapes, but we made the mistake of changing the cover, Ironia even changed the logo without asking us, and he put that stupid one with the classic country font... The reissue also doesn't sound so good, our home dubbed ones sounded way better. I'm not sure if Ironía made another edition cos' I saw some tapes with stickers and red cover instead of the printed tape and black covers of the ones we got, so who knows. What I know is that I'm still waiting for the master to be returned to me!
-All the songs on the demo are hyper fast grind-noise, except Inyectando Virus Ebola En Las Venas Genitales (my favorite song on the demo!) where did the influence for this song come from? (sounds to me like Godflesh or Head of David)
We were big fans of industrial music and experimental bands, so you're damn right, bands like Godflesh, Swans or Painkiller were all we had in mind when we did that track. There's also a cover of Godflesh in the demo, “Veins”.
-Was the band a complete line up in the beginning? Did you play any shows?
The core was Miguel and me, then we had a couple of guys “borrowed” from another bands, they weren't in it 100%. Chinín was playing bass with more punk oriented bands, and Marcos was the drummer for the death metal band Sepulcro, later renamed Deface. We didn't play any shows in those years.
-It wasn’t until 1998 that your next demo “Realmente Disfruto Comiendo Cadaveres” was released. Why did take almost 3 years between releases?
I don't know, we were lazy as fuck I guess, also Miguel was having some mental issues that led me to invite him to leave. The second demo was recorded by the same guy with another four track tape recorder, but he was already working in a professional studio so he got everything over there to mix and experiment all he wanted. He used and abused of the stupid pro-tools and the result was that weird cyber sound so overproduced for a grind demo, he even made whole songs at the studio putting little pieces together, a total nonsense I didn't like at all back then, and really hate now. I wasn't at the studio with him when he did all that shit, my mistake! Anyway the whole thing is a delirious and funny artifact of noise everybody liked a lot, we self released 500 pro-tapes and who knows how many home dubbed copies. It even was reissued on 10” in 1999 by Fudgeworthy Recs, that was so crazy! It's our first release in the USA, Charlie Infection did a fuckin' amazing job with it helping a lot to spread our name around the world. Fudgeworthy Recs is a true underground label that has been active since 1990, and Charlie is a legendary musician, he plays in a bunch of bands like Psycho or Gonkulator, he even played drums with GG Allin on the album “Freaks, faggots, drunks & junkies” in 1988.
-How much of Realmente… was made with a drum machine (if any at all)?
All drums were sampled and manipulated at the studio to the point of leaving the original drums unrecognized. I think that was the reason the drummer lost interest in Machetazo and was very uncomfortable with us. He also started to complain about playing too fast, cos' he was afraid about damaging his wrists and arms with the blastbeats. One day I told him that maybe it would be a good idea for him to leave, he immediately agreed, he didn't care at all. Then I searched for another drummer and asked Suici about joinning us, he tried a couple of practices but he wasn't fast enough, Suici hasn't been good with blastbeats never in his life, he's a good heavy and slow death metal drummer but definitely not fast. Frustradicción was dead and I wasn't drumming with any band, so I decided to switch to drums and lead vocals. We got Nacho on guitar and in december 1998 we recorded a bunch of songs that would appear on the splits with Rise Above and Abscess years later. With Nacho we played our first show, it was in A Coruña with Fermento from Madrid. Nacho left shortly after, we're still good friends, he plays now in the crust band Amhra.
-Over the next year or so, you write new song for various split releases and your first LP. Even though the new stuff is still grind based, there is a lot
more death metal influence now -so why the change?
When I switched to drums I had enough of all the noisecore stuff, I wanted to play death grind and focus 100% in the band, I was very determined to take my music as far as possible. I also added lots of influences from crustcore and sludge, I was a lot into Extreme Noise Terror, Disrupt, Eyehategod and Grief. Machetazo never was a band easy to categorize, our music covered many styles and also we moved in several scenes at the same time, we were open minded having friends and contacts everywhere, back in the day we didn't care if the show was in a squat with crust punk bands or in a big venue with death black metal bands, we would go the same way to annihilate everybody.
-The band has also always had problems keeping a stable line up? Is this the reason it was usually only you and Chinin (el Mescalinas) for the the first 5-6 years of the band?
In those first years Chinín never was a constant member neither, he would go and come whenever he wanted until he finally left without telling me much explanation. There's even a recording with only me in Machetazo, I had to record everything for the split 7” with Corrupted in 1999 cos' he left to pursue his dreams with a hardcore band he thought was going to become very famous. That band was a total failure and just disbanded after releasing a super expensive record that went nowhere, then he came back to me as soon as he knew I signed with Razorback Recs for a first album that I was about to record by myself, so I got him back aboard to record bass on “Carne De Cementerio”. I was always very cool and patient with him dealing with his constant changes of mind until I had enough of his bullshit, one day he left Machetazo again and that was the last time, we never spoke to each other again.
-The next period of the band (2002 to roughly 2008) has your brother Carlos and new guitar player Rober, what made this line up work? Why did Carlos end up leaving?
Now we're talking, this is by far my fave period of the band, maybe the only years we were a real and proper band. Rober came in after the first album was released, he even spent some months dealing with Chinín in the band, playing some shows and recording the songs for the split 7” with Bodies Lay Broken (those songs have also my brother Carlos as guest vocalist). Rober pumped in me new blood and energy like nobody before, I was so happy to finally find somebody at my same level of attitude and dedication for the underground. We were furious, determined, and ready to give our fuckin' best when we were working on the second album, the result was “Trono De Huesos”, a very important album that receives praise still today. When Carlos listened “Trono De Huesos” he was totally impressed and realized the band was no joke anymore, we invited him to be the bass player and he didn't think about it twice. Carlos stayed with us until the end of 2008, he was very dissatisfied with the sound production we got for “Mundo Cripta” (now I'm too), other problems and disagreements were constant. Also we're brothers, and you know how brothers are sometimes, we used to have a lot of arguments, one day we had a big one and he just left. But now we get along pretty well, no more arguments since we don't play together.
-From 2002 to roughly 2008, you released 3 full lengths (and a bunch of various stuff), did having an American label help you gain recognition?
On those years we worked really hard, also we played out of Spain a lot, some years we were out of town almost every weekend and any free time we could get from work, a crazy experience without a rest. The albums with Razorback Recs definitely helped a lot, both to the band and to the label, we grew together on those years. It was so cool to be from Spain but signed to a label based in New York, people here went nuts with that. But our recognition was also due to a constant appearance on stage, a good lot of EP's and split records between the albums, and of course the incredible amount of mail I carried.
-You also had the chance to do a short (East Coast) American tour around 2006, was this your first time playing in the US. Do you remember any Highlights?
Yep, that was our first time in the US, no doubt the best tour we did ever, for many, many reasons. We were invited to play Maryland Deathfest that year so we took the chance to tour around the East Coast with Splatterhouse, our Portland buddies who had some dates planned around there just the week before the fest. We all met in Baltimore and that same day played in a warehouse together with Plaguewielder, on the floor, no stage, everybody around the bands while they played, just my fave kind of show! I don't remember all the bands we shared stage with but I remember Graves At Sea in Philadelphia and Psycho in Boston cos' they were amazing. Splatterhouse kicked ass every night aswell, we had a blast with those guys, very nice people who helped us a lot. The absolute highlight of the tour was the show in NY at CBGB's with Pungent Stench, it was one of the most memorable days in my life for sure, the show was insanely good and I met a lot of old penpals there, also it was recorded and we released it some years later! Any band with a “Live at CBGB” at the discography can die satisfied. Maryland Deathfest 06 was crazy, after a week of too much drinking and not much eating we were exhausted, but anyway we nailed it, we were young and restless, those were the days, the good times. Don from NunSlaughter sang a cover of Massacre's “Corpsegrinder” with us, that was so fuckin' awesome.
-For the rest of the time the band is together, it’s just you and Rober correct? Even though you were still releasing music, were you getting discouraged doing Machetazo?
Right, Rober and me were together until the end, with a couple of session bass players we had for live shows; our close friends Santi (Inerth, ex-Nashgul, ex-Looking For An Answer) and Iñaki (Horrible, ex-Denak, ex-Dishammer, ex-Moho). Iago (ex-Frustradicción) was the unlucky bass player during the last year, playing live and also recording the last Machetazo records, the split 7”s with Ras and Headless Death. He found the band dying already, sorry for him cos' he's a great bass player and a good old friend of mine.
Honestly, Machetazo never was the same after Carlos left, we lost somehow the feeling of “being THE band”, the camaraderie and the magic was slowly fading out, Rober and me got burnt-out of all the touring and to sacrifice weekends and vacation time to the band started to be a pain in the ass. We never made enough money to quit our jobs, so it was always the same shit over and over, at the end it brought too much frustration, disappointment, anger and lack of communication between us. Machetazo was an hyperactive band, non-stop, if we weren't in the studio we were on the road. We weren't like those old farts who now boast of having been together for 30 years but then you check out their activities in the last ten years and they played like one fest every year and recorded one EP in the last 5 years, fuck that shit.
-Before the band ended, you released the excellent Ruin LP and played Maryland Death Fest twice. What were some of the other highlights of the last years of the band?
Hell yeah, we played Maryland Deathfest three times in total, that's awesome and I'm very proud of such achievement, those guys loved us, they even asked for a reunion not long ago.
“Ruin” is the clear reflection of how we felt back then, we were depressed, angry and tired. I really like the album cos' it's pure darkness and real despair, the cover artwork made by my late friend Timo Ketola says it all.
I can't think of many highlights in the last years... maybe the “Necrocovered” EP cos' of some crazy special guests on vocals like Chris Reifert and Kam Lee. But I remember mostly the terrible hangovers at airports, stupid arguments, broken friendships, boredom and feel like I was wasting my time.
-After 20 years, you end Machetazo, was it a hard decision? What was your state of mind at the time?
It was just another of my spontaneous decisions, and my mind was blurred the same way it was when I was a 21 years old stoner. I was very depressed for some time, but when something is dead is dead, leave it to rot and turn the page, luckily nothing is eternal.
-In hindsight, how do you feel about the bands legacy?
I feel very proud, we did a lot and pretty well, also we quit before we started fucking it up, that's not very usual, you know!
BODYBAG
-Pretty quickly after Machetazo ended, you start Bodybag. What were you trying to accomplish with a new band that you couldn’t with Machetazo?
I just wanted to stay active and have something I hadn't in years: Fun. So I joined with a couple of young dudes and things were rolling pretty quickly.
-Did you feel that Bodybag had a greater amount of straight forward death metal influence?
Not really, I think it was grind as fuck too, some of my best blastbeats are in Bodybag songs.
-And with the name, it didn’t matter to you there had already been a US grind band called Bodybag?
We hadn't idea about that band, we only knew there was another contemporary Bodybag, but a metalcore band, so we didn't give a shit.
-The first Bodybag release, Predominance of Insanity was recorded in 2014, did Bodybag start up before you officially ended Machetazo?
It started up exactly two weeks after Machetazo's end. Another of my “spontaneous decisions”, this time a very precipitate one cos' I was still suffering the Machetazo depression, I don't know why I didn't take a break to cool my mind a little bit, but I guess the anger and frustration I felt was embodied in “Predominance Of Insanity”.
-The pace of releases for Bodybag was much slower than Machetazo, was this a conscious choice or did other things slow the band down? Were you also playing in other bands at the same time?
I hadn't other bands, but the other guys in Bodybag were always busy with other bands and projects, never 100% in Bodybag, sometimes some of their other bands interrupted Bodybag activities, in fact that was the main reason that led me to split it. But I totally understand they acted like that, they were way younger than me, also they already had those other bands with their buddies before joining me in Bodybag, so the one that was left over was me.
-Did you play many live shows or get to play outside of Spain much?
We just played a few shows in Spain and two in Portugal. We didn't get many proposals for shows or fests, promotors didn't care at all about Bodybag.
-Besides Hellnation being a fucking AMAZING band, how did you come to do a cover on the Invocation of Obscene Gods compilation? Had you know Doug before then?
Oh yes, I know Doug since so many years I can't remember. No doubt the best thing that the underground scene gave me is the friends I made around the world, and the backwoods butcher is one of the very best. I've been a Hellnation fan since I got “Your chaos days are numbered” LP, I still think it's one of the fastest records ever made, some of the greatest hardcore / grind right there, incredible album! When Doug invited us to the compilation the choice was easy, “Fuck your hippie love”, awesome song and even better lyrics.
-3 years, 4 official releases, 21 songs… how do feel about the bands legacy?
It's a proper dose of old school grind death you don't hear very often anymore, grindcore has changed a lot these last years and I think Bodybag was one of the last real ones. Most of the bands now who claim to play grind just play bullshit; too much math hardcore and post metal influences, stupid double pedal gravity blasts with triggered drums, Donald Duck vocals, indie hipster attitude... modern grind sucks.
-Any last words or thoughts about the history of Machetazo/Bodybag? Anyone you want to thank or give a shout out to?
I want to thank specially my old friends Nor Prego and Paco “The Maggot” Liaño cos' without them I wouldn't be able to be who I am today, they always supported me no matter what, never failed me. Thanks also to the record labels who bet big on me all those years, specially Ramón at Living Dead Society, Uge at Throne Recs, Jill at Razorback Recs and Tim at Parasitic Recs. Hails to anybody who bought / buy my records and came to the shows, you all rule, check out my current projects Leprophiliac and Premature Burial, hope you dig them. Thanks for the interview Brian, it's been a good nostalgic trip.
