Ricardo Rodriguez (Atonal)
The eldest son of a musician that also played in a band with a very broad taste in music, but his favorite bands were bands like the “The Doors, The Who, Iron Butterfly Etc, a lot of classic rock like the ones mentioned.
Since the time I can remember I had always been creative started with art, and then became creative with music since basically my father had guitars and music equipment at home, he even had me watch him practice with one of his bands.
I slowly became interested in the guitar but could not play it the time. My father was the guy who show me who “Judas Priest and Iron Maiden” were, at 11 yrs old. Wasn’t too hot about them at the time but they were intriguing to me.
I slowly started to gravitate towards that style of music and then by junior high school, I got a copy of “Metallica's Master of Puppets” and my interest in playing guitar went to the roof, since I was blown away and said to myself “I want to play and sound like this” my dad tried to teach me simple cords but did not have the patience, since I wanted to learn metal riffs, so I started learning on my own.
I switched from guitar to bass since both were fun to play, once in high school got to Jam with some friends so I played the bass at the time. We started a band led by the drummer and we called ourselves “Damage. Inc”. That did not last because of creative disagreements, so I decided to look for other musicians around my area. Found another band just to jam and that did not last either, since it was almost impossible to find musicians around my area to play metal.
By the time in my early 20's I decided to go look in Los Angeles, by then my taste had gravitated to speed metal/death metal. I had a best friend from child hood that played guitar and had the Equipment, so all we needed was a drummer by then I had bought a 4 track a drum machine and started recording and mixing bass, guitars, and vocals. Made an 8 song demo tape to take to shows and pass around and eventually we found one thanks to the demo tape and that was the beginning.
While I was making the demo tape, I wanted the name of the band to mean something I did not want to call it something that popped out of thin air. Since all the songs were written by me and the lyrical content was based on my past experiences in life, my beliefs and the study of the history of where I come from, I named it TAZUMAL(Place of Sacrifice, Place of the Relinquished)the loose meaning of the word.
I have played with local bands and big touring bands throughout the years, I have seen bands form and disintegrate and I think the reason TAZUMAL it's still around, it's because it is personal for me and I have the support of my band mates who are accomplished musicians that have seen it all, so there is no bullshit and we know what we want to do.
