Joe's Big Toe

There exists today a tri­angle of inex­tric­ably linked Latin metal bands. Two of the corners are Sepul­tura and Soulfly. The third is Ill Niño. Ill Niño is named for the Pacific weather dis­turb­ance, El Niño, which has a huge influ­ence on South Amer­ica, with the “El” changed to “Ill”, to reflect the blend of lan­guages and cul­tures the band incor­por­ates, and to dis­tin­guish them­selves from another band with the “El Niño” moniker.

The band was foun­ded in 1998 in New Jer­sey, although they did not release their debut album, Revolu­tion Revolu­ción until 2001. After this album, two of the six found­ing mem­bers, the gui­tar­ist and the per­cus­sion­ist, left the band, although Marc Rizzo (gui­tar) stayed with the band to record the second album. Before the release, how­ever, he was replaced by Ahrue Luster, formerly of Machine Head. Confession’s lead single, How Can I Live? was fea­tured on the Freddy vs. Jason soundtrack, and the album was widely well received. Less than two weeks after the release of their less-successful third album, Ill Niño left Road­run­ner Records for Cement Shoes, a new label, which is now believed to be defunct.

They released their fourth album, Enigma, in 2008 after sev­eral post­pone­ments, and left Cement Shoes in 2009. The band have been on a break since, with most of the mem­bers work­ing in man­age­ment and pro­duc­tion, but the band will be releas­ing a new album with Vic­tory Records in autumn.

The band are widely respec­ted on the metal scene, col­lab­or­at­ing with Chino Moreno (Deftones) on a Faith No More cover, play­ing live along­side Ozzy Osbourne, Tool, Dis­turbed, Gods­mack, Sys­tem of a Down, Sev­en­dust, P.O.D. and Slayer, and inter­est­ingly, after Dave Wil­li­ams of Drown­ing Pool’s death, his fam­ily gave his micro­phone to Cris­tian Machado, due to the pair’s friend­ship. He uses that micro­phone today.

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Image found here, released under a CC-BY-SA licence by Luiz Araujo