Midwest BEAT Magazine

In 1993, when they signed to Polygram Records, the Los Angeles-based downset (along with Rage Against The Machine) were one of the first bands to
perform what is now termed "nu-metal," a bed of hardcore instrumentation with
rapid-fire rap lyrics laid over it.

Grunge bands still ruled the radio then, but the future was being cast by Polygram. Thousands of copies of "Our Suffocation," a four-song sampler tape of downset's music, were given away free at record stores across America.

Theirs was not the ear-friendly, rap/rock/funk hybrid being laid down by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but a much angrier music fueled by social and political messages.

While downset drew up the musical blueprint, what ignited the current boom "nu-metal" genre were bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Slipknot, who took their sound and ran with it all the way to the bank.

Frontman/lyricist Rey Oropeza hopes the band's third album, "Check Your
People," will finally push downset into the spotlight. "This sh*t's selling millions of records now," he says. "The whole rap-metal thing is HUGE!" It's important that downset gets out there and that kids get what I'm tryin' to say. (Our music) is about a lot more than skateboarding in suburbia or the chaos of Woodstock. "

downset's career got blindsided by the Polygram/Universal/MCA merger just
as the whole "nu-metal" scene was starting to explode. They were out with the 1997 Ozzfest and on world tours by the likes of Slayer and The Deftones, just as they preparing to start this third record.

"There's a lot of turmoil in the songs on this new record," said Oropeza. "We had some personal problems within the band and then we got caught up in one of the worst corporate glitches in history. It's really amazing that this record actually got done. It was our trial by fire."

"If we didn't get caught up in a lot of the problems we did, the music scene would be a bit different now," says guitarist Ares Schwager. "A lot of the fakes out there would have been seen through."

downset also includes bassist James Morris, drummer Chris Hamilton and guitarist Rogelio Lozano (who is also the touring guitarist for Cypress Hill).

"Check Your People" is more personal in content than the band's two previous activism-set-to-sound releases - "downset" and "Do We Speak a Dead Language?" Although all members are still under 30, Oropeza said "getting older" has made him turn his lyrical angst inward. "I've learned to walk away from a lot of things," says the man who once lead a gang-banger lifestyle. "Art leads to a more positive form of expression."