- On his second album for PAN, Kamixlo reawakens the spirit of Bala Club by calling on past collaborators to blur the boundaries between nu metal and industrial reggaeton.
- Growing up in Brixton, Kamixlo was homeschooled because he didn't fit in at his local primary. His clothes were different, and so was his hair—two things the kids around him didn't take kindly to. At home, his parents gave him full creative freedom. He spent his childhood drowning out the world around him, eating through Korn, Limp Bizkit and Dr. Dre in his bedroom.
You could say the parties he later threw with his former collective, Bala Club, originated in that Brixton bedroom. Bala Club wasn't your typical club night: industrial reggaeton mashed with smooth-brain trance, and lineups gave a home to outsider pop artist Coucou Chloe and industrial techno producer Englesia. Even though it's been four years since Bala Club ended, Kamixlo's second album, DEATHWORK, feels like a reincarnation of those genre-agnostic nights—a record that unveils the full breadth of the pop, metal and Latin influences that make up Kamixlo’s artistic identity.
In some ways, Kamixlo and Bala Club were ahead of their time. The cross-pollination of mainstream, underground and Afro-Latin music that were always central to Bala Club are now in full force with the ubiquity of dembow and pop edits in clubs. Forward-thinking DJs like Manuka Honey produce goth-minded reggaeton, while rising stars like Bapari and PALMA gleefully play Korn. Pop has had its say, now we're in the metal and emo phase of the dance music continuum. DEATHWORK affirms this while also acting as a reminder that, for Kamixlo, this has always been the case.
While these influences have been prominent at Bala Club, they've not been as clear in Kamixlo's past releases. His Chilean heritage and love of wrestling—referenced with the black and white luchador mask on DEATHWORK's album art—have been the dominant talking points among the press due to the physical, industrial nature of his dembow-infused music. He revamps this narrative on DEATHWORK, channelling those late-'90s influences with the help of some Bala Club alumni. Kamixlo enshrines these collaborators in a fittingly epic stage: "Ketamine Fields"'s climbing riffs roar the record to life like Jimmy Page striking up a chord to a stadium full of fans. The electric guitar is a slick addition to Kamixlo's sound that makes DEATHWORK feel more in tune with the live improv nature of Bala Club which embraced disparate styles and spawned supergroups like In Heaven Everything Is Fine.
The album's vocalists also bring a modern take on nu metal. Puzzle (AKA Fletcher Shears from The Garden) throws around statements on "Chaos" like a kid doing the paper rounds, flinging out bad news to the neighbours, carefree. "You can get kicked in the face with a heel," he sneers with both the childish swagger of Smash Mouth's "All Star" and the husky grit of Mike Shinoda. Bala Club regular Bladee is more bleak, pouring out a morbid monologue ("Cold blood killers in the building / In my body there's no feeling"). Twinkling instrumentals that could belong over an episode of Rugrats downplay Bladee's imagery so that, as with Puzzle's contribution, it takes the nihilism of those early nu metal bands and pushes it deeper into the mud, to a place where meaning and morality have been all but blotted out.
DEATHWORK represents a key development from the emo and nu metal angst of the '90s to a more Gen Z despondency. "Pitch Black," is the record's crowning example of this: Kamixlo's partner, Isabella Lovestory, croons for hard sex through distorted heavy metal chugs and an industrial dembow stomp. When she begs "Baby dámelo por atras, tras" ("Baby give it to me from the back"), it's more likely to make you blush than Fred Durst screaming, "You wanna fuck me like an animal!" on "Hot Dog."
And for the club rats worrying if all the records' biggest moments are rock-adjacent, there's the tech house of "one more night at the line" with its helium high-pitched vocals that bubble up over distant metal clangs. "Godless" could make it to the smaller stages of Tomorrowland, with its synths spiralling around what sounds like a power drill boring into your brain. These are stirring anthems that pull you off your feet, a bit like how the winding synth on "Azucar" does (from his Cicatriz album) but more aggressively–less a pull, more a yank.
When the album's not in your face, it revels in moments such as "EGO FRAGILE / SPIRIT WEAK," where jaunty synths bounce as though they were an 8-bit Mario hopping from cloud to cloud. In under 30 minutes, DEATHWORK zigzags from pneumatic machinery to glitzy synthetics; from rave euphoria to downtrodden neuroses.
There's no doubt that Kamixlo’s love of wrestling has been important in shaping his character. But it's not the whole story. As listeners, we're greedy; we want both the hardened villain and the soft human beneath the surface—Batman and Bruce Wayne, if you like—otherwise the story’s incomplete. DEATHWORK is Kamixlo's musical unmasking. His past work, while strong in its own right, packaged him up in an industrial reggaeton-shaped box. DEATHWORK represents the freedom Kamixlo has always craved since he was a kid listening to Backstreet Boys and Korn in his room—for those who wish their club experience could feel just a little bit more like a basement metal gig.
Lista de títulos01. Ketamine Fields
02. Pitch Black feat. Isabella Lovestory
03. Combe
04. Chaos feat. Puzzle
05. One more night at the line
06. Godless
07. EGO FRAGILE / SPIRIT WEAK
08. Death Forever feat. Bladee
09. Insect feat. Mechatok