| Ill Nino is a melodic hard-rock band comprised of five Latinos living in New Jersey. Their sound is an admittedly interesting combination of hard pounding in-your-face heavy rock pummeling in the same vein as Soulfly and ultra-melodic passages often underscored by stylish (albeit somewhat fake-sounding) Spanish guitar. In other words, it's like a bastard lovechild between Max Cavelera and Ricky Martin.
The band consists of the following members of the Garden State Latino Possé:
- Christian Machado alternates between throaty yet somehow unconvincing cookie monster growls and a melodic singing voice that would make Justin Timberlake piss himself.
- Dave Chavarri used to play drums for Soulfly (and, to the best of my knowledge, still does), but in the context of this band seems content with just hitting his crash cymbal a lot.
- Marc Rizzo thinks his guitar riffs are so brilliant they're worth using twice. Or even three times. Slowing them down a few bpm equals creativity - everybody wins! He does know how to work his way around an acoustic guitar, though.
- Jardel Paisante chugs along and helps deepen the impressively thick wall of distortion. He also takes extended smoke breaks when Marc busts a move on the acoustic. (Or hits the sampler. I'm still not convinced that guitar's for real.)
- Lazaro Pina plays bass. Well. He also seems to admire Jennifer Lopez a great deal, especially her ass*.
- Roger Vasquez bangs bongos in the background. (It sounds like a children's pop-up book, but isn't.) In the video he uses drum sticks, but I'm pretty sure that was just for show, because every percussionist worth his salt knows that this is, in fact, a very dumb thing to do.
They are assisted in their quest for world domination by:
- Omar Clavlio who does sampling. I am increasingly of the opinion that he's the one being clever with the acoustic guitar and not our wall-of-fuzz buddy. Come on, listen to the opening of "Unreal" and tell me that's not sampled!
- DJ Skratch who, apart from thinking up innovative stage names and spelling them incorrectly, does a bit of vinyl damage on almost every song on the record.
- Krztoff plays keyboards. I dare you to make me a wav of you pronouncing that.
Their first cd, entitled "Revolution...Revolución" is currently out on Roadrunner Records - also home to such esteemed acts as Sepultura and Fear Factory. The track list is:
- God Save Us
- If You Still Hate Me
- Unreal
- Nothing's Clear
- What Comes Around
- Liar
- Rumba
- Predisposed
- I Am Loco
- No Murder
- Rip Out Your Eyes
- Revolution/Revolución
- With You
If you're interested in listening before buying, the first two tracks are available on their official website, www.illnino.com.
* I'm not even making this up. Ref: their official site. | 
