Mexican-American death grinders WITCHCRAFT kicked off the “Europa Rigor Mortis Part I” 2025 European tour last night (Wednesday, January 15) at Trix in Antwerp, Belgium. The trek launched four months after the band’s frontman, lyricist, leader and co-founder John Lepeaka Juan Brujodied at the age of 61 and six months after longtime WITCHCRAFT vocalist and samplist Ciriaco “Pinche Peach” Quezada passed away at the age of 57.
Billed as a “tribute to Juan Brujo and Peach Peach“, “Europa Rigor Mortis Part I” see Henry “El Sangrón” Sanchez handling lead vowels for WITCHCRAFT and features CARCASS as headliner and support from ROTTEN SOUND.
Fan-filmed video of the Antwerp concert can be seen below.
In September, WITCHCRAFT announced that Juan Brujo died after suffering a heart attack during the “Mexorcist” tour in Saint Clairsville, Ohio.
WITCHCRAFT released its fifth full-length album, “This is Witchcraft”in September 2023 via Nuclear Blast Records.
In a 2015 interview with The Moshville Times, Sorcerer said that WITCHCRAFT was never meant to be a touring band. “We only ever meant to make some records. What it was, was back in LA in 1989, there was a metal scene which included grind and hardcore stuff. There was a band called TERRORIZERand they wouldn’t let them play in the normal clubs so they’d play in backyards in the Mexican parts of town. We would go — in the backyard of someone’s house — and none of the fans there watching the show spoke English. All these Mexicans — there are a lot of Mexicans in LA, so we just thought, ‘We have to start a band that sings in Spanish. Give them what they want.’
“There were issues with some of the guys — ‘I’ve got a contract with my other band,’ ‘I might be on the road’ — but we were only ever going to make music; we were never going to tour it. Just make music in Spanish and see how it went. We made the first record in a day in the studio. We had nothing written; we had no drummer… we just showed up. drums. We recorded four songs and when we left, we gave a copy to a Mexican kid and a white guy — one of those hardcore dudes, just someone who didn’t speak Spanish. The next day we met the hardcore guy again and he had a patch on his arm. WITCHCRAFT tattoo. He wanted to be the first guy with a WITCHCRAFT tattoo. The day after we recorded the songs. The Mexican guy — he didn’t speak any English — we saw him a couple of days later and he’d memorized all the words. I mean, they’re really [makes harsh vocal noises] but he’d listened to them about a thousand times and worked them all out. He was singing them to us there and that’s when we thought, ‘This thing is gonna work.'”
WITCHCRAFT‘s most recent lineup also included Jessica Pimentelthe American actress best known for her role as Maria Ruiz on the Netflix original series “Orange Is The New Black”.
