 "Photo: Joel Hersch")
Spanish metal band Trust Nothing had crowd members at Montsros Pizza hurling into one another with the band’s vocal roar, drums and wailing guitars on Wednesday.
As lead vocalist Ina Suarez kicked through the air, mic clasped so tight in his fist all the veins in his arms and neck bulged, he tilted his head back and screamed at the top of his lungs.
A group of about 20 people of all different ages attended the show, most with some tell-tale sign of their punk nature. There were mohawks, sleeveless studded jean-jackets, tattoos and lots of piercings.
On their first West Coast tour, members of Trust Nothing are excited to be at the birthplace of the hardcore metal they all grew up loving, said guitarist Ana Cadenas, the only woman in the squad of rough and tattooed Spaniards.
Cadenas started the band in 2005, she said. All the members play in different hardcore bands back home in León, a big city in the northwest area of Spain, but they started practicing together and Trust Nothing was born.
The band members speak in Castilian Spanish among each other but choose to sing in English to better represent the music they grew up with, Cadenas said. The whole punk movement started in the U.S. and English is the language of metal.
“It is easier to explain what we sing about in English and you can reach more people,” said bass player Gonzalo Muñiz. “The sound of metal is better in English and all the metal we listen to is in English, from the U.S. or Europe.”
When Muñiz isn’t playing with Trust Nothing, he works as a tattoo artist in León.
In May, the band went on tour in England and met John Montage, a member of the PyratePunx English chapter, said drummer Ramon Alvarez.
PyratePunx is a non-profit organization, which started in the Bay Area, that sets up shows for underground punk, metal and hardcore bands, according to its MySpace page. Since it started in 1997, PyratePunx chapters have been started all over the world.
“John saw us play and told us that if we wanted to do a West Coast tour in the U.S., we could,” Alvarez said. “We said yes.”
The English chapter of PyratePunx contacted the chapter in the Bay Area and set up a tour schedule that has taken the band up the coast of California and will soon take them to Oregon and Washington, Alvarez said.
Though the group is Spanish, the style and energy in their music makes them fit in nicely at Monstros Pizza.
“We love to play our music here in the U.S.,” Suarez said. “It’s a very good and positive punk scene in Chico.”
In León, the punk and metal scene is a much smaller, tighter, more intertwined community, he said. There, the punk, metal and hardcore fan base runs together because there are way fewer shows to go to.
“Here, it seems like everyone loves the music,” Suarez said. “In our town, if we play a show for just the hardcore punk fans, we play for four people.”
Trust Nothing has a much bigger community of punks and metalheads to play for in the U.S. and the crowds welcome them.
Trust Nothing put on a great metal show, Chico local Chris McCarthy said.
“It’s cool to hear foreign bands singing in English,” he said. “It was really hardcore.”
Because of the intense feeling throughout the show, when the band was finished there was a feeling of abruptness. One moment the crowd was in a frenzy with the music blaring, the next, silence.
The band members finished pumped up and satisfied with their performance, Suarez said.
“Oh man, the show was so good,” he said. “Guys from Chico are fuckin’ awesome. They really made us feel at home.”
Joel Hersch can be reached at
jhersch@theorion.com
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