Muletrain
- Maintaining the right to be crude

By Jon A

As a foreigner living in Madrid, at times you'll have to balance the plentyfold small discomforts with the overabundance of comforts. Like the city is polluted and noisy, but that's because it's so big and because it's alive 24-7. Or the beer sucks, but at least it's cheap (unlike Norway). You have to go to the fancy, expensive supermarkets to get ecological milk, but they also have a wide selection of imported beer. The madrileños can appear a bit boorish, but they're definitely not snobs. And, for a country that produces such fantastically annoying and unshakeable pop droll as Las Ketchup and still worships Whigfield, its underground produces punkrock that's appropriately crude and brutal to take on the crappy pop. Forget garage revivalism and bowl haircuts, Spain's vision of punkrock is dead honest and totally fucked up. Old heroes like Safety Pins have given way for new acts, of which Madrid's Muletrain are by far the most impressive act I've come upon. Like Zeke, a band that blackclad 50's cool, widowpeaked guitarist and singer Mario will admit in the metro after the interview to be one of his favorite bands of the last few years, Muletrain is a band that plays dumb and brute, but appear to be a lot smarter than they let on, and that shines through on their debut album of last year, "Demolition Preaching", on Beat Generation (reviewed in LowCut 19). Fittingly, when I met 3/4 of the band at Rock Palace, a rehearsal place and sleazy r'n'r bar near Atocha, drummer Servan was in his pinstriped suit, coming directly from his job as lawyer, while bassist Nacho with his fuzzy beard and beige outfit most of all resembled an assistant university teacher.

LowCut: First of all, let's get a hold of your origins. Some of you played in a band called Aerobitch before, and I know Servan was in a Canarian hardcore band, right?

Servan: "Yes, Aerobitch was a very important Spanish punk band, they were big, on an underground level at least. Then the singer, Laura, wanted to quit and the others decided to continue in a slightly different vein, more metallic, more punk."
Mario: "It was a new situation for us: Aerobitch had been together for some 8 or 9 years, so we wanted to change the direction, try something new. We tried with another drummer at first, but then Servan came along..."
Servan: "I had to pass the exam! Well, the other drummer didn't hit the skins hard enough, he wasn't up for it. So we started rehearsing and playing live, and then Beat Generation wanted to do a record with us on cd and vinyl. That one works somehow as a document of that particular moment of the band, I think."
Mario: "It's a lot cruder than we are now."
Servan: "And that's the history up to now. Including car crashes and our sex life."
Mario: "Well, Nacho is the knightsman there!"

LowCut: To me, Muletrain appears to be music for men, very masculine and brutal, and the record is dedicated to the memory of Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer, two prototype men in punkrock.

Servan: "I don't know, I don't think of it as such. But it's sweaty, yes, and I guess rock is a masculine genre..."
Mario: "Not necessarily; Aerobitch had a female singer for example. But yes, r'n'r can tend to be male chauvinistic."
Nacho: "I guess it's natural for rock to be macho."
Mario: "But there have been plenty of bands like Plastmatics, Joan Jett, The Avengers, and they have influenced us as well; we don't just listen to music for stupid men. A band like L7 are very physical and hard, too."
Nacho: "Or Bikini Kill, who were hard punk and feminist."
Mario: "But I guess we do sound very crude because we're that noisy. In Aerobitch we had Laura who had a really strong voice, I don't, so I'll just have to growl."

LowCut: Then, is there a political agenda to Muletrain? The booklet to "Demolition Preaching" contains notes on the CIA and one David Noebel, who has written against rock music.

Mario: "I don't see us as a political group as such. Of course we have political inclinations that shine through, but basically we write about what happens to us in our everyday life; girls, getting drunk, and then naturally politics will be a part of that; the general state of the world, so in that way we're political. It's also about trying to find alternative information, rather than the sludge you're fed in the mainstream press."
Servan: "We may not be especially political as a band, but we definitely have the spirit of rebellion in us, and to me that's the essence of punk. It's a very specific aesthetic."

LowCut: And you've included a manifesto for Muletrain in the booklet, about the right to be crude and noisy and to give it 100%.

Nacho & Servan: "Ha-ha! That's Mario's!"
Mario: "He-he, it's our creed."
Servan: "We have to pledge this oath everytime before we play, ha-ha!"
Mario: "We'll always try to give everything we have when we play live; there's gotta be that love of it, the joy of doing it, we all believe in that."

LowCut: A different aspect of Muletrain is the flirt with satanism in songs like "Black Zodiac" and "She's in Love with Black Metal".

Mario: "I'm interested in the occult, in the taboo. Black metal was fascinating, because it was truly dangerous, you know, this was truly scary stuff. I'm not that much into the music itself, bands like Bathory and so on, but I totally dig the videos, they're so great, plus I was really fascinated with reading the book 'Lords of Chaos' [Michael Moynihan and Didrik Södergaard's brilliant work on the rise of Norway's black metal underground]. And I knew these girls at the university, you'd talk to this nice, quiet girl and ask her which music she liked: 'Emperor!' Ha-ha! Well, maybe on our next album we'll do corpse paint..."

LowCut: As for the punkrock stance, you have a song called "Born Again" against techno, which is quite old school, like the "Disco Sucks!" badges.

Mario: "Well, it's not that categorical, Nacho even likes some electronic music."
Servan: "It's the punkrock sentiment, going against the mainstream."
Mario: "Thing is, here in Spain we have this kind of techno that's called bacalao [crud], that's like this really braindead pumping stuff that's absolutely awful."
Servan: "But it's not like the individual members of the band can't listen to electronic music. I for one like some stuff like Moby..."
Mario: "Don't write that! Stop the interview! No Moby, no U2, I'm not having it, I'm leaving! Moby, pfft!"
Servan: "Ha-ha-ha!"

LowCut: Apart from Muletrain, Mario plays in Chingaleros that are more r'n'r. (live review in LowCut 19)

Mario: "Chingaleros is an escape, it's something we do for fun. Muletrain is a more serious band, we have a record out and all, have to practice and so on; with Chingaleros we can get together and play thrash metal for 2 hours if that's what we want to do. Bad thrash metal, mind you!"

LowCut: Chingaleros is supposed to be Latin American slang for a drunkard, isn't it?

Mario: "I don't know, we just made it up, we had no idea the word existed."
Nacho: "I think it's Mexican slang. It's an insult in Mexico, someone calling you a dirty chingalero, I think."
Mario: "It's someone who makes love to corpses."
Servan: "Ugh!"

LowCut: What are the plans for a new album?

Mario: "I think 'Demolition Preaching" came out in January..."
Nacho: "So Enano [from Beat Generation] probably wants a new one for January! Which is not gonna happen."
Mario: "The thing is we're all busy, we don't get time enough to rehearse. Like tonight, we were supposed to rehearse at 6 pm: I came at 6:30, Nacho came at 8:30, Ivar, our second guitarist, is away in another town, Servan didn't make it until 9:45, and rehearsal ended at 10 pm."

Until Muletrain drag their asses together and make a new album - which, judging by the first one, shouldn't take too long anyway; this isn't Tool, you know - "Demolition Preaching" is still waiting to be discovered by those outside Spain. Check http://www.munster-records.com or, in Scandinavia, have your local store order the LP or CD through the Sound Pollution in Scandinavia.