Alex Jorge Mole: a precursor of extreme metal in Cuba

It's night and in the places where rock is heard, something of the classics, The Beatles, “can't even be pigeonholed into the genre; they did something so unique that many classified it as music beat”, says Alex Jorge Mass. They pass songs of the British group. And hard rock. And heavy metal. But extreme metal is still in Holguín, in that city in the East of Cuba, the reason for a secret cult, for a sect of “distorted ears”. The extreme metal is, for many, “alien technology”.

“Havana is something else”, they think. This idyllic image is held by those who know the Patio de María, the place opened to rock by María Gattorno in 1987; those who know that metal fans also meet at the Coppelia ice cream parlor, at the Capitol or at any other mouth of the night. There are those who have not been there, but imagine that there they do not receive rejection as in this province where, bordering on the 90s, people are still buried in heavy metal, "impressed with Barón Rojo, Ángeles del Infierno, Iron Maiden, Accept, Helloween" and with what they get from Metallica —only now is thrash beginning to be heard—. They imagine that Havana is something else because, in addition, the most extreme albums have come from the capital.

This was the case with death metal records, the first ones that hypnotized Mole. A friend from Havana gave them to him during a vacation, not knowing that he was unwrapping a kind of spell: “the sound that really got to me”, says Mole, “with those covers that were masterpieces”. Death metal changed everything, even the sounds of Morbo, the band I was putting together. Then Morbo was renamed Destrozer, and the thrash compositions became death metal.

Before his ears, eyes, and whole body tingled from albums by Obituary, Death, Morbid Angel, Autopsy, Benediction, Carcass, Napalm Death—those insane scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration—, Alex Jorge had dabbled in thrash, heavy metal, rock and other music. At the age of 19, he had traveled several musical worlds. Like a few friends from Holguín, he could be considered an advance if one takes as such someone who follows on his own the coordinates that give the most subterranean sonorities.

In Alcides Pino, that suburban area where Alex Jorge grew up, a small labyrinth of dirt roads that the sun squeezes with the same severity as in the desert, music was always within his reach. Any neighborhood in Cuba is an outdoor loudspeaker, not only because of how people communicate on a daily basis, but also because from any sidewalk a loudspeaker can throw the most diverse musical tastes. In the 70s, recalls Mole, interpreters of the prodigious decade, Pimpinela, the Venezuelan José Luis Rodríguez The Puma, Mexican rancheras, Los Van Van and Oscar D´ León, but also Kool and the Gang, Boney M, Donna Summer, Daryl Hall & John Oates and the Jackson Five played on the radio.

The act of buying a Stevie Wonder LP from an Egrem store to put on a record player that his father had brought from the Soviet Union marked a change. Later, he would have records by Donna Summer, Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. What he liked was Anglo-Saxon music. First it was pop, then rock.

destroy. Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.

"I never liked Cuban music," says Mole. “It gives me a bad taste. In fact, Puerto Rican salsa is more pleasant to my ear than Cuban salsa, which I can't stand, and, by the way, I don't know how to dance”.

Despite the parties in the neighborhoods that are usually almost daily and the carnivals that, in general, take place to the rhythm of Cuban dance music, Mole chose other sounds. The dance, he says, is "a real danger...but, as is the idiosyncrasy of Cubans, it is respected." It was not for the "messes" in which some of those salsa-based "conglomerations" ended up, and Anglo-Saxon music was outlined as a "salvation board".

If something set him apart from Cuban dance music it was “those syncopated rhythms, too much percussion; the lyrics of sweetness and similar themes; the fact of being a music merely for dancing, that does not generate an atmosphere to tell you a story, although in salsa you can find some… In my worldview, dance music only brought to mind sweat and carnival”.

At that time in Holguín, as in the whole country, “the urban legends around rock were no less dark”. The genre was talked about “as if it were a mafia, a disease, a terrorist movement, a forbidden cult”, and from the 1960s to the 1980s there were few who openly dared to transgress the existing prohibitions on the Island to listen to the rock and fill the sound void with the transfer of records, the tuning of some foreign station or the production of this music.

"Luckily people are rational," says Mole, as if thanking those who, despite the doctrines, conscious or not, sneaked rock in Holguín. He is sure that through them “the pandemic began” from Elvis Presley to The Beatles to the “real demons” who were “Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Yes, Pink Floyd”.

“I had a rocker cousin who was a fan of Scorpions who, in addition, was considered a sucker for that. I was still a child, but he talked to me about music as well as literature. At that time (the 70s) rock was very intellectual and was intertwined with poetry, so at the same time that I verbally knew Led Zeppelin, which I never liked, and Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, which would later be my favorites, I also knew William Blake, Yeats or my cousin's idol, Jorge Luis Borges, by reference”, recalls Mole.

It was in that group of older boys to which his cousin belonged that for the first time he heard Kiss, but it seemed too strong, perhaps because his "ears were enraptured by so much pop", but a few years later he would cross the bridge: "I understood the rock as a very sincere music, lacking the trashy pop, a frontal genre, with radical tendencies, openly. There came a time when pop sounded like children's music to me, and when I heard rock I said: here's what I'm looking for, strong emotions”. At that time he began to explore the genre head-on listening to “the old” and “the new” that came from abroad and even on national and local radio.

In the 1980s, the Cuban media began to include rock in their programming. A study by the Cuban Music Research and Development Center (Cidmuc, 1983) reveals how, through surveys, conversations with those who followed the genre in Havana, and interviews with academic composers such as Juan Blanco and Frank Fernández, as well as Directors of radio music programs, considered devoted to these sounds, drew up a dissemination strategy for the genre. But this emerged crossed by a selection criterion: the "most acceptable" for the Cuban socialist society.

Perspective is one of those programs that Mole remembers today. However, although some tastes could be reflected in what was transmitted through these media, in Holguín, as in the rest of the island, a few formed an underground universe of independent searches for what the institutional framework intended to classify as "Cuban rock" and "what best of international rock”.

This did not mean a total distancing from listening to non-Anglo-Saxon rock, that coming from European socialist countries that was presented in theaters and other places in Cuba, nor did it mean ignorance of the work of Latin American musicians or national projects such as Síntesis, the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del Icaic and troubadours who also incorporated rock into their repertoire. However, some, like Mole, felt uncomfortable with these sounds.

“Socialist rock, Latin American pseudo rock and those who flirted with the genre in the country such as Síntesis, Mejora and Edesio Alejandro continued to seem desperately shy to me,” says Mole. “In my language I call pamplinosa music that began to be made by many creators who did not dare to cultivate the genre head-on. At that time I came to hate all those who did not dare to sound the genre as it should be. For me, rock is strength, energy, or aptitude and experimentation a la Pink Floyd, not a deception a la Santana, Síntesis and Fito Páez himself. I don't question his talent, but his way of assuming the genre. Why listen to Synthesis? That's why I listen to pure Afro-Cuban music. It's like when I come across an erotic movie, why would I watch it if porn exists? To the point, to the essence, why so much nonsense; but those monstrosities of Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, Caifanes, Caramelos de Cianuro, etc., is not what I consider true rock. They are musicians who have appropriated the best of the genre for the mix they make, but it's not rock for me, it's not what I'm looking for in that music”.

His musical worldview was another. Therefore, there were other values that motivated this search that led him to be close to rock collectors in his city. These generally did not assume the rock aesthetic and almost "did not leave their houses", they had numerous records and were "encyclopedias".

Similarly, he allied himself with the "street" rockers, an environment to which he began to belong despite the social stigmas that continued to fall on these followers of the genre:

“In Holguín they could strip you in the middle of the street, cut your pants if they were too tight, or send you to a correctional school for minors,” he says.

The attacks did not come only from those who wore uniforms, but also from those who did not understand the music, the makeup and the performances of singers from groups like Led Zeppelin, Kiss and others.

“They offended you in the streets; the ´guapos´ emerged, salsa lovers who immediately understood that their empire was tottering with this strange genre kidnapping followers and wanted to demonstrate their tropical manhood by making real street raids on the rockers with their share of wounded, "says Mole.

However, the parks and other public places where —especially at night— rock was heard had several attractions for him. Those who met there formed a kind of "gang, a horde to unload and do crazy things" such as the so-called "guerrillas" — trips to other provinces to attend concerts or festivals or simply to some place that allowed them to leave behind the routine-; cemetery raids; get "some drugs, drunkenness and sex". On the other hand, this environment also attracted other people, and not necessarily because they were devoted to music. There were "misunderstood or frustrated people who, taking advantage of the brotherhood of the environment, where no one judges you, stood out for their negative attitude, to top it off, using gender... They are the most problematic, the most extravagant, the most visible... and, with the As the years go by, their true personality comes out and they end up somewhere else,” says Mole. “And a dangerous thing would happen, the occasional criminal would sneak in, attracted by the family environment where hardly anyone knew each other, but in which everything was shared, even girlfriends.”

Despite these issues, in that space there were also those who took music seriously; They talked about records, learned to play, formed bands. That was the current that Mole followed and the one that saved him from being “a false prophet”, from not being a true connoisseur of rock.

Like others, he attended the peñas and concerts where the groups of the time were performing, both those with versions and those that were beginning to incorporate original songs. He was part of the public that assumed the defense of the genre —which was like defending himself— and, once he managed to play the guitar, he joined the group Cuerpo y alma. The latter emerged in the early 1990s with some members of Aries, a lineup that stood out since the late 1980s among the few that leaned toward the rock side in Holguín.

But, Alex Jorge had other ideas. “I did not last long in that project, I immediately realized that this was not what I wanted, not to mention that it was not my responsibility. What I needed came later.”

 ***

In the early '90s, Mole was obsessed with sounds even wilder than heavy metal. Without a doubt, listening to the latter had been another turning point in his musical experience. It was precisely when the records of Iron Maiden —one of his leading groups—, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, Kiss, Accept, Scorpions, and other bands that he did listen to in depth at that stage, that he decided to learn guitar . “Listening to my favorite groups, things came to my mind and I imagined myself on stage… I have to get to that… One day I approached my brother who played guitar and had been part of a salsa group while he was on scholarship and I told him: I want you to teach me how to play.”

The strong sound of heavy metal was adjusted to the emotions I was looking for at that time, which also spilled over into the entire aesthetics of this music. The musical universe that he knew from other line-ups such as the British Black Sabbath was expanded with this genre that included "incredible voices", "dark and esoteric lyrics" that "were outlined in The Number of the Beast, by Iron Maiden”, and songs by King Diamond or Helloween, such as dr stein, even a virtuosity that “turned guitarists into heroes, legends”.

Blaspheme Orgies demo cover. Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.

But, in addition, Mole was a devotee of literature, of science fiction and horror films; he also drew and made caricatures on “apocalyptic themes, monsters, death, destruction, those things”. Heavy metal, while musically materializing all that subjective world, took him further, outside "the backward and totalitarian society in which he lived" and the "frustrations" that, he says, molded his character.

In one of the houses he visited, some cassettes appeared that, although recorded by hand, triggered something even more powerful than heavy metal. There were also electrifying guitar solos, but the music sped up inside the ears producing a new energy. Those sounds stuck in his mind like pieces of a puzzle. "I set myself the goal of looking for records of higher quality" among the friends of Holguín. Annihilator, Metallica, Anthrax, Overkill, Forbidden and Sepultura —which perhaps bewitched him because of that almost guttural voice of Max Cavalera, and because of the lyrics of death and destruction, at least on the first albums— were some of those thrash bands that they surprised him.

While hard rock and heavy metal prevailed in the rock scene, already in the first flashes of the 90s, Alex Jorge and a few —among them, Omar Vega, creator of the Holguin fanzine Turbulence; Marcel Soca, who will travel as a drummer in the history of Destrozer; Francesco Martínez, who will also be part of that group—were in the depths of thrash.

On those nights when rock became audible somewhere in Holguín, which could be the Club Atlético, the House of Culture or the House of the Young Creator, when Mole talked about extreme metal, as almost always happened, many did not they understood Even though the first rejection that Metallica's thrash received in Holguín led to a cult of the American band, this subgenre was not thoroughly explored by other rockers from the eastern city, "who did not pass Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth" and "Groups like Forbidden, Destruction, Sodom", which "the advanced ones" listened to, were not known there. Death metal was even more underground.

For this reason, Alex Jorge felt comfortable in a sect of friends attentive to these new, more radical sounds. These extreme metal sessions, especially thrash, and the constant search for the new that could circulate in the country, led Mole to create Morbo in the early 90s, which soon mutated, with the influences of death and grind, to Shatter. Although like other bands from the beginning of the time, Morbo had no life beyond the rehearsals carried out for a few months, it allowed "to polish a style" and "deal with the difficulties of maintaining a line-up".

***

With Destrozer, the primitive compositions of Morbo reached other dimensions. The entrance of Francesco Martínez and Gustavo Adolfo to the group meant, according to Mole, the perfection of the band. However, in the rock atmosphere of Holguín, “Destrozer died being a misunderstood group. It was more accepted in the West, but in the East we were always outcasts.”

At least in the early 1990s, getting involved in these sounds still had the charge of madness there. "The other musicians thought we were crazy." If they distinguished themselves in any way in the rock space, it was like “the black sheep”. However, Mole did not give up. With Raymundo Rodriguez World, another rocker from Holguin, had toured some parts of the island. He knew of bands from the West that did what he considered true rock. He had listened to the death metal band Cronos, from Villa Clara, a group ahead of its time, and had communication with some metalheads who were beginning to make efforts to unite those who produced and experimented with these subgenres.

For the first time he performed with Destrozer at the Caibarién Festival, in the province of Villa Clara, where in the wake of the 90s, Cronos, Nekrobiosis, Sectarium and other bands spread the breeze of extreme metal throughout the territory. The group's potential was also tested at the Marianao Amphitheater in the capital, in 1996. From the public's reception, Mole put Oriente on the nascent Cuban map of extreme metal.

Over the course of the decade everything changed in favor of this music and Holguín became one of the main squares in the Cuban scene, joining what was happening in Havana, Villa Clara, Pinar del Río and other territories of the country.

The 1990s were an intense period of experimentation for many of the forerunners of extreme metal. Among other projects, Mole gave life to Mephisto, the group that consolidated him as a musician nationally and internationally. This band emerged in 1996, when the history of Destrozer came to an end.

However, the lineup that marked the debut of this metalhead was not in the past. In 2019, Mole concluded the remake of the demos Blaspheme Orgies of 1995. For this, he summoned young musicians, Ernesto Virelles Cockey, as a vocalist, and Kevin Chaperon, in charge of the guitar solos.

With five themes: Blaspheme Dead Empire; Elaine, The Betrayer; Satan's Promises...TI have returned; demonized and Sacred God's Termination, once again made the death metal sound of the 90s audible, as well as the imaginary of radicalism and musical poetry that identified it in those years and that it has developed to the present day.

* This text was written with excerpts from several interviews with Alex Jorge, conducted by the author as part of an ongoing investigation into extreme metal in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Cuba.