The Dominican Republic artist Gallo Lester is probably as well known for his persona as a rockin' rooster as for his music- but the music is what is important here. As you may be able to conjecture from the title of his LP (Mambo Metal La 2da Venida) his style unapologetically melds mambo rhythms together with heavy metal riffage. While the resulting sound is unique and a product of Gallo Lester's eccentric vision, it's not entirely without precedence.
The Congolese band Orchestre Rock-a-Mambo was combining Caribian rhythms with rock and roll as early as the 1950s, and if you haven't checked them out yet, you absolutely should! More recently, the Chicago-based hardcore band La Armada claims to draw from traditions of merengue for their aggressive and hard-hitting grooves. There are, of course, others I could mention, but I think you get the idea. People have been doing this sort of thing for a while. Even when faced with the history of Caribian rock fusions though, Gallo Lestor still stands out. Like these other bands, you can hear in Gallo Lester's music a natural harmony between the boldness of his rhythmic inspirations and the ribald character of his guitar work. Unlike those who came before him, or his contemporaries, Gallo Lester draws from a dark well of power that is untapped by others- his own warped imagination.
From the outset of a track like "Odiobretch," you get the sense that you've entered an alien plain. The rhythms ripple and swell below your feet as if you were standing on a wood floor that suddenly began to separate its planks, like a giant set of gills, and exhale hot air up your pants legs. Simultaneously, the guitar melodies ricochet in all directions, igniting bright blossoming plumbs of sonic/psychic debris to confound your senses, creating an effect akin to a bird haplessly attempting to navigate a fireworks display that has interpreted the trajectory of its flight. All this is happening while the call and response vocals sway with a wayward pinning lament, drowning your soul in desire and sorrow. Seriously, it's a whole trip.
The following track is no less strange, seeing Lester rapping over a Hendrix-inspired guitar wail while a frantic rhythm lights up the background and a chorus of backing vocalists appear to perform a religious chant to help channel the spirit of the song. The madness continues on tracks like "Lo 30" which is like a hallucinogenic acid house voyage guided by the astral projection of Devin Townsend, and the punked-out, orchestral slam-balled "Gobernante" which seems to spool together aspects of grunge, power-metal, and post-rock into a single shredding homunculus.
There are more subdued segments as well, like the Peruvian-infused enchantment "Encaramao," and the trip-hop traipse "Ciguapa," but even the less frenetic tracks are brimming with Lester's irrepressible showmanship. And that's kind of what distinguishes his music from almost everything else I've heard in this lane: its brazen theatricality. Mambo Metal La 2da Venida is like being strapped into a roller coaster that shoots you through the fairgrounds of a mile-long, twisted carnival- complete with tightrope walkers dressed like demons, fire-breathing stiltwalkers, chainsaw-wielding clowns, and animals cosplaying as carnies while running the concessions and gorging themselves on popcorn.
It's pretty astounding how everything that Gallo Lester throws at you hangs together as well as it does, and the fact that every track is as imaginative and layered as the last simply compounds the absurdist charm of the album as a whole. Mambo Metal La 2da Venida is as maddening as it is mesmerizing, as magnetic as it is kinetic, and I wouldn't want it any other way.
