Yaotl Mictlan combine black metal & indigenous, pre-Hispanic Mexican music & themes on new song

Salt Lake City black metallers Yaotl Mictlan (which translates into “Warrior[s] from the land of the Dead” in the Mexican language Nahuatl) will release their third album and first in ten years, Sagrada Tierra del Jaguar, on October 30 via Mexico City-based label American Line Productions (pre-order). The band incorporate indigenous, pre-Hispanic instrumentation and lyrics about pre-colonial Mayan culture, and here’s what drummer Yaotl tells us about new song “Búho Lanzadardos,” which we’re premiering in this post:

The track “Buho Lanzadardos” (“Spearthrower Owl”) starts with a minute long indigenous instrumentation intro that sends the listener back to the Mesoamerican past when war, rituals, royal bloodlines, and city-states were a part of life in Ancient Mexico. We collaborated with our good friend Mazatecpatl who recorded the intro for this track in his hometown of Guadalajara Mexico.

This song is a tribute to Spearthrower Owl ruler of the ancient central Mexican city Teotihuacan in the year 378, who sent an army lead by Born of Fire to march across Mesoamerica to overtake the most powerful Mayan city-state at the time called Tikal in Guatemala.

1,642 years later you can still witness Born of Fire and Spearthrower Owl’s legacy in the ruins of Tikal and several other Mayan ruins in buildings that they commissioned with central Mexican gods like Tlaloc plastered and carved into them.

Listen to the new song here: