Cheech and Chong doing Big Hair-era covers

Heavy metal hasn’t been this much fun since Van Halen made it music that a person could sing along to. In general, the genre takes itself far too seriously. Metal music comes couched in grand theatrics and lashes out in an ear-hating panic-front of staged bombast and grandiosity. Why did we laugh so hard (some still do) when the movie Spinal Tap was released? Because anything that goofs metal’s inherent lies is funny. Metalachi does this.

They call themselves the world’s first and only heavy metal mariachi band. Even though it still sounds like your basic norteño and cumbia, the twin pillars of mariachi music, you almost don’t have to hear this band to get the joke. Just imagine Cheech and Chong doing Big Hair-era covers.

“Aa-aayy Mama, like, say, the way you move? It’s gonna make me sweat, it’s gonna make me groove and shit, you know?” is how Metalachi does Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.” Face paint, wigs, and sombreros. Hollywood meets Christmas and Alice Cooper with a hint of metal’s other weirdest band, GWAR. Metalachi broke onto the national stage via the television show America’s Got Talent. They were eliminated during the judge cuts round. The band’s bio says they took inspiration from a Black Sabbath record, reworked it for trumpet, violin, and that big fat guitar called a guitarrón, and tried it out at a backyard party. Instant success.

Metalachi claims to be five bastard brothers from Veracruz, Mexico, even though the band now includes a hard rocking violinist who goes by Queen Kyla Vera. The rest of them are Vega De La Rockha, El Cucuy, Paco Halen, Kiko Cane, and the band’s founder, Warren Moscow, and the cheeky band bio is as imaginative as their names. Metalachi’s mariachi sizzles, and they use it to bend the rules on everything heavy metal/hard rock, from Twisted Sister to Queen. Yes, a clown act, but one that rocks the house.