YOKOZUNA II, YOKOZUNADiscos Intolerancia, Mexico **1/2
Rating: 57
By Carlos Reyes
Yokozuna may not sound very familiar to you if you’re outside Mexico City, it’s one of the city’s most respected contemporary rock bands, because well, they got the attitude and they rock harder than the average rock band. I’ve always had a blockage with their songs, and that’s really uncomfortable, I feel like the leftside fresa who raises an eyebrow instead of joining the wild jamming crowds. I guess everybody has a number of bands we learn to respect and recognize as valuable participants of the arts, Yokozuna II will not convert me into a fan, but I’ve found this to be their best hour yet. Excuse the self-centralism comment, now let’s get to the actual album.
Yokozuna (Los Hermanos Tranquilino) deliver highly suspended songs for an audience that would probably listen to them on the dark. Ok, not really, but while listening to this it feels like the clouds fill with despair and just might catch on fire (I suspect hardcore fans enjoy that). The music successfully brings all the elements of its cold metalllic prime, when you combine that with such boring lyrics about love as those in “Drogame” and “Ya no queda nada de mi amor”, it’s hard not to feel dissapointed, you can’t just margin a rough storm, make it rain hard enough to threaten people’s safety. It’s not that love lyricism and hard rock can’t coexist, it’s about not falling into middling gray areas where hardly anything trascends.
When it comes to vocal execution and its distance from everything else, this reminds me of Omar Rodriguez Lopez (all of them), except there’s more swagging here than actual riffs. When they get it right, they really get it right; “Zatopec” is bold and explosive, “Slam y Minifaldas” achieves the desired sense of dislocation narrated by the lyrics, “grita mas fuerte, ven y grita para mi.” The rest of the songs are either too monotone to stand out or too ragged that they can only add up to a dense production. Some of my friends say I’ll change my mind once I see them perform live, meanwhile I’ll just tag myself as Yokozuna intolerant.