Cortez. Conqueror. Killer. Oppressor. Madman. The great god Quetzalcoatl returnedas a blood-mad Spaniard. And now, head-cracking rock n' roll band. Take a listen,and it'll all make sense.
Formed in 2006 from the ashes of several of Boston's stoner rock and punk n' rollinstitutions, including Fast Actin' Fuses, Sin City Chainsaw, and Portland,Maine's Supersoul Challenger, Cortez has taken everything good from their oldbands and made them bigger, louder, and heavier than ever before. Borrowing theirname (but precious little else) from Neil Young's classic and controversial song"Cortez the Killer," the band has been electrifying local stages with a pulversinglive show and an arsenal of instant-classics like "The Highlife," "Stone theBastards," and "Floodwater Rising" that mix classic 70's hard rock with rumbling,doomy stoner-metal. With influences ranging from the proto-metal fuzz of Cactusand Deep Purple to sludge-masters the Melvins and speed-weed monsters High onFire, this is band that's done its homework, and its sound stretches back throughthe decades, a timeless throb of heavy metal thunder and endless, rolling grooves.
Regional success is one thing, but a band like Cortez can't be contained by theborders of Route 495. Cortez has recently signed with Belgian dope-rock labelBuzzville, home to like-minded midnight ramblers like Artimus Pyledriver,Gonzalez, and Generous Maria. A new album titled Thunder In A Forgotten Town,produced by Marc Schleicher, head party-wrecker in the infamous Coke Dealercartel, is due to land sometime this year. A six-track orgy of southern-fried riffn' roll, heavy on the acid-for-blood wah-wah and the thundertrain rhythm section,with the spectacularly confident vocals of the singularly-named frontman Curtispropelling the whole bruising chain into the arena-burning stratosphere. For aband that's only been around for a year, they sound like they've already crashedtheir first private jet. This is thick, gristly rock music that sticks to yourguts and leaves you clamoring for the next mind-frying riff, the nextchest-thumping chorus, the next bout of shameless, heads-down superchug. Cortez is the real deal, brother. No wonder theestimable Arzgarth at Stonerrock.com wrote, "Cortez is rapidly becoming a killerband in Boston . If there's such a thing as classic stoner rock, these guys aredoing it." Said album was recorded in December of 2006 at New Alliance Studios, thesame house of horrors that spawned seminal releases from blister-rock champs likeRoadsaw, Cracktorch, Scissorfight, Throttlerod, and countless others. Soon then,the world.
So, what does Cortez want? The usual rock n' roll bullshit. Frothy crowds, briskcd sales, six figure download numbers. Women, leather, and Hell. Mud n' blood.Power and Glory. And someday, they hope to tour with ZZ Top. Or at least play at abar that has ZZ Top on the jukebox.