Martin Sorrendeguy had just finished screaming. Los Crudos’ music stopped too, abruptly. “For those of you who come up here, it’s really wet and slippery,” the band’s singer and emanating focus advised his stage divers. “Just be careful.”
The Fifth Street corridor just east of I-35 proved the perfect arena for Los Crudos Saturday night. Hardcore punks who came to subculture stardom playing warehouses and school gymnasiums around Chicago in the Nineties, they earned the distinction of being one of the most politically conscious Latin American groups ever, a band that spoke the gospel truth to disenfranchised minorities because its members themselves grew up marginalized – and, in many ways, remain so.
No surprise, then, that the band – reunited once more after a 2009 disbandment – set forth its mayhem on a stretch of road that, on one side, served as Chaos in Tejas’ smelly, black-vested epicenter and, on the other, played host to Queerbomb, Austin’s fourth annual “gorgeous blast of LGBTQIA representation.”
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Sorrendeguy, himself gay, told fans during a quick break. “There’s no fucking shame in being exactly who you are.”
That makes Los Crudos the most badass breakneck punk band to ever set fire to a stage in 45-second sound bytes while also managing to be spiritually motivational. Sorrendeguy sings like he’s on fire, leaning back and barking into the microphone, then throwing his fist into the air and ducking his head forward. He bends over and thrusts the mic into a fan’s face; bodies up against a stage diver just before the stage diver takes flight.
He cites controversial state legislature – Arizona Senate Bill 1070, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act widely considered the strictest anti-illegal immigration act the U.S. has ever produced – then tells his adoring masses how funny it is that “people get all weird about immigration when this land belonged to someone else.” Then he breaks into “a song about people who came here with no fucking passports” (“Sin Caras”) and the mob scene gathers again.
“It’s charming,” the Men guitarist Nick Chiericozzi confided to me from the crowd. “They’re living right there in the moment.”
Evening headliners Framtid followed Los Crudos with 45 minutes of ungodly D-beat, eschewing political discourse for vocalist Makino’s tectonic-plate-shifting growl. Behind him, the Osaka, Japan, quartet played fast and furious over cuts from the band’s 15-year career, including 2013’s wild Defeat of Civilization, their first in nine years, with guitarist Jacky relentless in pace alongside drummer Shin’s incessant kick work.
“This is what hell sounds like,” I wrote in my notepad. “This is the sound that starts fires.”
Bald except for a long dreadlocked ponytail that runs down the length of his back, Makino walked the stage like an emperor, spitting orders while Jacky shouted in agreement. Stage divers shot from each side of the stage, sending beer cans flying and feet towards the heavens.
Makino and Jacky closed the night by jumping into the crowd themselves, letting the hands of adoring fans hold them up while they shouted into microphones. The Chaos in Tejas crowd loved them, and rightfully so: If you’re flying all the way to Texas from Osaka, Japan, you better be ready to rip some heads off.
This article appears in May 31 • 2013.