Totimoshi
Mysterioso
(Crucial Blast)
That chunk. That crunch. That jackhammer and road crew machine beat that rumbles the earth. There is something about a giant thud that satisfies my heart. I remember at one of my many lackluster office jobs, there was a parking garage being erected behind our building, i guess to quicken the pace of the corporate bankruptcy process that came to full blossom six months later. Anyway, one day I was staring out the window at some giant earth stamping contraption, and noticed that three other guys were all staring too, transformed to 5 year olds wishing we could do that when we get big. I realized this daydream came from a place of privilege when I relayed this story to my cousin who ran a similar road crew. He said he often would look up from his Bobcat to see some asshole like myself, holding a cup of coffee, standing in an air conditioned office staring longingly at him, who was tasked to toil in the hot sun to provide a shaded parking solution for said asshole. But as Tom Waits, the patron saint of Privileged White Men wanting to Keep It Real once said, you're innocent when you dream.
I still get that same buzz when I hear chunky funky hard rock like that of Totimoshi - a trio encompassing Meg Castellanos, lethal on the bass and rumored to handle Flamenco dancing duties, and two metallic fellas, Tony Aguilar on guitar and vocals, Don Voss on drums, who have recently ratted the fuck out of my cage with the recent reissue of their relentless album Mysterioso. A mix of deft garagey guitar thrash, Mariana Trench bass lines and some of the most complementary drumming I've heard in a recent metal release (it seems there is an unfortunate trend toward the drums operating as their own unit rather than with the band to some sort of collective musical end.)
The album has a consistent deluge level of stoner monster rock, spilling through the canyon, heavy like those grunge people thought they were (but weren't) way back when, and the highlights are almost consistently Meg's megaton bass. The opening track "Float" and toward the end "Oblivion" hold truest to form, pounding on your psychic door like the cops before they kick in the door. Aguilar's vocal work is definitely menacing and strong, but thankfully it takes a backseat, or at least a passenger slot with the beat and the groove here. One almost wants to point to Tool as an influence here, especially on the sample-laden "Vitreol-A" but they are more funky, less flaky than the aforementioned group. Since this album was originally released in 2001 and recently brought back to light by the good boy scouts of Crucial Blast, I can't verify if the unit is still intact, but I am definitely keeping my ear to the ground, in case their superb rumble threatens to come anywhere nearby.
is an odyssey from the backwoods bars and small-town dives to the swampside dance halls and converted clapboard barns of a Louisiana Saturday Night. Don't leave Heathrow without it. His first book 
