Latin America Beyond Brazil: Kraken, Transmetal, V8, Hermética

Brazil is the part of this story that got out. The rest of Latin America produced scenes that were just as committed, working under conditions that were frequently worse, and almost none of it reached anybody outside the continent until the internet arrived.

Argentina

The most developed scene outside Brazil, and one with a genuinely mass domestic audience. V8 arrived at the start of the 1980s and are the founding Argentine metal band; out of them came Hermetica, led by Ricardo Iorio, who wrote in Spanish about Argentine subjects and became something close to a national institution.

That is the crucial difference from Brazil. The Argentine bands sang in their own language about their own country, which limited the export potential and gave them a domestic connection that no Brazilian band pursuing the international market could match.

Colombia

Kraken from Medellin, formed in a city living through the height of the cartel violence, singing in Spanish and becoming genuinely popular at home. Their debut in 1987 is more melodic than most of what surrounds it in this article, and the band remain revered in Colombia.

Around them a considerably more extreme underground: Parabellum and Reencarnacion, whose recordings are among the most primitive and disturbing made anywhere in the 1980s, and who are cited by black metal musicians who never expected anybody to have heard them.

Mexico

Transmetal from Mexico City are the most prolific extreme metal band in Latin America, with a discography running to dozens of albums. Around them, a scene supported by an audience large enough that touring within the country was possible, which very few of these places could say.

Chile and Peru

Pentagram from Chile made demos in the mid 1980s that circulated internationally and are still traded, without ever releasing an album at the time. Peru had Masacre and a small underground working with almost no equipment.

The language question

Almost every band in this article sang in Spanish, and that decision shaped everything that followed.

Singing in English was the route out and it required writing in a language most of these musicians did not speak, which is what the early Brazilian bands did with mixed results. Singing in Spanish meant a real connection with a domestic audience and effectively no chance of an international career before the internet.

Argentina and Colombia mostly chose the second, and it gave them something the export minded scenes did not have: bands who were genuinely part of their own culture rather than an approximation of somebody else's. Hermetica were writing about Argentine unemployment. That is not a subject that translates, and it is why they mattered where they were.

What changed

Access, in both directions. A Colombian band in 1987 could not be heard outside Colombia without a miracle; a Colombian band now is heard everywhere within an hour, and the historical catalogue has been reissued and rediscovered by an audience that did not know it existed.

The effect on the historical picture is real. Parabellum and Reencarnacion turn out to have been doing things in 1987 that Europe is usually credited with, and the Chilean demos are now understood as part of the same international underground rather than as a local curiosity.

The country that did get out, and the scene it left behind, is covered in Brazilian Thrash Metal Bands; the British scene that had every advantage and did nothing with it is the UK thrash scene.

What the conditions were

Different in each country and consistently harder than anything in Europe or North America.

Colombia in 1987 meant Medellin at the height of the cartel violence, with curfews, bombings and a genuine risk attached to being out at night. Argentina had come out of a military dictatorship in 1983 and into an economic collapse. Chile was still under one. Peru had an internal conflict.

Under those conditions, forming a band is not a lifestyle choice. Several of these musicians have described playing shows that were genuinely dangerous to attend, and the records reflect that in a way that no amount of imagery from a safer country can approximate.

How to explore it

By country rather than by band, because each scene has its own logic and mixing them produces confusion.

Argentina first, because it is the most developed and the most accessible: V8, then Hermetica, then the wider Iorio catalogue. Then Colombia, which splits cleanly between the melodic and popular end and the extreme underground. Then Mexico and Chile.

Expect the recordings to be rough and expect the Spanish to matter. A great deal of what these bands were doing is in the lyrics, and a listener who treats the voice purely as texture will miss the reason Hermetica were important at home.

The one Latin American scene that did reach the rest of the world is covered in Brazil, Canada and the Rest of the World.

The second generation

Everything above is 1980s. What followed is in several cases larger and is almost entirely unknown outside the continent.

Argentina produced a substantial ongoing scene built on the Hermetica inheritance, with Almafuerte and a dozen others. Chile has become one of the most productive extreme metal countries anywhere per head. Mexico has festivals that draw international bills. Colombia's underground never stopped.

The bands are now heard globally the moment they release anything, which has quietly changed the shape of extreme metal: a substantial proportion of the interesting records of the last decade come from South America, and nobody outside it noticed the transition because there was no moment when it happened.

Sources and notes

Years refer to original releases where these are documented; several of these recordings circulated as demos before any pressing existed.