"Three out of four band members live in TJ," said Fabian Tamayo, rhythm guitarist in MinusOne. The only stateside resident was the band's drummer, Pierre Moreno, who lived in Imperial Beach. He fabricated custom motorcycle parts at a shop called Racing 905. "We like to play all types of metal," said Moreno while the band was still extant, in 2007. "We do death, we do thrash, we do grind, we do speed, we do power, we pretty much do all that."
MinusOne was part of Tijuana's metal scene since 2002. They also performed in Mexicali and, more and more, in the U.S. "We try to play more on this side, if we can get gigs," said Tamayo, who worked a day job in Kearny Mesa. "Since we got the word out and got a reputation for ourselves on the other side [the band frequently refers to the U.S. as "the other side"], we've got a pretty good following, [as well as] in TJ and in Mexicali."
Is there really much of a club scene for metalheads in Mexicali? "Over there," he said, "we play pretty much anywhere they let us play." MinusOne rehearsed in a rented studio in downtown Tijuana. Christian Nieto was the band's lead guitarist. According to Moreno, "We've played Scolari's Office...they don't have specifically a metal night there, but they put on a variety of styles of music...we played the Zombie Lounge...we played Chaser's once, and we've done two or three house parties here in Chula Vista."
What is the heavy-metal scene in Tijuana? "There's a lot of good bands out there," says Tamayo. "There's a couple of places that are doing shows right now." He mentions Sotano de Rita and the all-age cultural center Instituto Cultural Baja California, known as ICBC.
"But we're pretty much over the whole Mexico audience," says Moreno. "With our new album [the self-released record The Rise and Fall], the American audience is gonna adapt to it a little more. Over here [in the U.S.]," he says, "there's more metalheads."