Now is the time to discover local Latino metal music acts from both sides of la frontera, thanks to Edgar Rentería's new dream venture, Tijuana Rocks (also known as Tijuana del Rock), which plans to tour SoCal.
Tijuana Rocks plans on presenting up to half a dozen metal shows a month in different cities of Baja and California, plus a yearly festival, which took place in Tijuana on May 18. Since the festival, Rentería has been getting positive press in Baja.
Although Rentería isn't a metalhead, he's definitely an advocate for the scene.
“The heavy metal subculture has been wrongfully criticized,” Rentería said. “It is a music genre that expresses emotions, as any other, and many of its fans are educated, working and entrepreneurial people.”
Knowing there's not enough opportunities for the Latino metal acts, Rentería created Tijuana Rocks as a platform to give them exposure at legitimate venues like the Griffin. His first music festival offered 14-hours of nonstop metal, which illustrates the fact that there's a lot of metal acts in Baja ready to shred. Many of these bands from both sides of la frontera rip their songs en Inglés.
"We're having our first concert in San Diego with performances of Mortuus Terror, Leather Nun and the stellar Armagedon, who make their return to San Diego in over a decade,” Rentería said about a show at the Griffin over the weekend.
Dita Quiñones is a multimedia journalist born in Tijuana with a passion for Latin alternative and hip-hop music news. Her main goal is to uplift and inform so that the Latino and Hip-Hop community get knitted into the fabric of American history. In addition to SoundDiego, she contributes to Latina, FOX News Latino, Poder, VidaVibrante, and HipHopDx. She is also the founder of the infamous music and politrix blog GN$F! Follow Dita on Twitter.
