Back in 2010 Bode Preto had been disclosed to the world thanks to the great taste of folks out at Terrorizer. A Terrorizer’s “fear candy” CD was where my first encounter with these Brazilian metallers happened, not long after a festival where these guys would have fit perfectly, the 2010 edition of Live Evil Festival where some legendary and long-lived Brazilian bands had set the stage to fire, i.e. Vulcano and Grave Desecrator.
Then I got hold of Bode Preto’s debut EP, Dark Nights, offered for free download on the band’s site. Out at the old Sludgeswamp I was concluding my post about Bode Preto, and their far too short debut, with a loud “we want more!!!”. Well, it took a bit of time and important changes in the line-up but Bode Preto came back with more excellent stuff.Which is again highlighted on the latest issue of Terrorizer.
Bode Preto (= “black goat” in Portuguese) are from the town of Teresina, in the State of Piauì, in Northern Brazil. The band started as a trio fronted by founder vocalist/guitarist Josh S. Then the band evolved into a duo where Josh is in charge of vocals, guitar and bass, and is sustained by drummer Adelson Souza aka Angeldust, previously in band Grave Desecrator. These are the bodies and minds behind the new album by Bode Preto, Inverted Blood. The final addition to this team and to their release is none less than guitarist Fábio Jhasko Mello of legendary Sarcófago.
Not bad, eh?
So here we are obviously not dealing with doom or sludge metal but with equally gloomy tunes, genuine, pedigree-guaranteed Brazilian death metal, drenched with ancestral nastiness and darkness but also with much much groove and old-school character. That’s probably why these tunes are so infectious, especially if one is not into “modern” metal. Moreover Josh has something in common with many of us: he has always listened to different kinds of music but he was struck and infected by Black Sabbath when he was an early teen! But of course legendary old-school death and black metal bands from USA, Brazil and Scandinavia are the main sources of inspiration for the sound of old and new Bode Preto. So here is album Inverted Blood, which was released in early November 2012 and which includes 9 tracks for about 26 minutes.
A spoken, or better, growled Anunciação (“annunciation”) is the menacing intro to the album which develops across the following eight tracks into a rather consistent way in spite of some differences between the tracks. This because Bode Preto by now have their own style.
Bode Preto play a hybrid genre mixing death and black metal done with a murky production perfect of a dirty, lo-fi-sounding “old-school” feeling. They play fast, raw, quite brutal, with deep growled vocals, razor-sharp riffing, frenzied accelerations, furious drumming, blast beats, the whole lot. However brutality is tempered by loads of pure, Motörhead-ian punkish/ rock’n’roll groove. But Bode Preto are immensely nasty: Josh’s growls are powerful and scary and may even turn to deep bestial gurgles. Tricks of the mixing allowed a reverbered or doubling effect of the vocals that make chanting even more gruesome, ancestral and three-dimensional. The conflicting coupling of such deep, ancestral growls with the frenzied rhythms of riffs and blastbeats remind me of the sinister, morbid darkness as in early Morbid Angel. This also reminds me an experience in Amazonas years ago with the majestic, scary roars of the howler monkeys echoing over the jungle at the twilight while birds and insects around me were getting crazy with their noises and calls.
But in spite of the typical leading relentless rhythms, Bode Preto tracks have often a special flavour. For example this may come from the nesting of almost epic, haunting or ritualistic melodies into the fury, like in the core of the beautiful track Elytron (Succubus). Or else you get the surprise from some pure heavy metal solos fighting for emerging from the dirty wall of sound, like, for example, towards the end of track Serpent Inferior, one of the tracks where Fábio Jhasko Mello of Sarcofago contributes his guitar solo performances (the other two tracks are “Black Mirror” and “'Mother of Ferocity”). Also track Amorphophallus Titanum has something special as it is lead by a somehow swinging melody which is curiously and pleasantly contrasting with Adelson’s devastating drumming.
The making of this album is something worth being told and reflecting how passion and kinship may deal with huge distances, like the over 3000 km separating Teresina, where Josh lives, from Rio de Janeiro where Adelson Souza lives. In spite of computer connections and invariable exchange of files etc., these guys overcame an impossible distance for an underground band and ended up actually rehearsing together at Josh’s home! And this is how a simple collaboration at distance turned into a real band. Bode Preto’s Josh and Adelson are recruiting session musicians, on bass and second guitar, for touring in Brazil during April 2013 and then, hopefully, in Europe during the second half of 2013. Inverted Blood started as totally diy project and is available as digital release on the band’s official website. However the band was able to attract the interest of labels that have been and are distributing the album, both in tape and CD format, on both hemispheres (Ketzer Recs. in Germany, Goatprayer Recs. in UK and Läjä Recs./Death Noise Prod. in Brazil – see Bode Preto’s official website for details). Recently the band got some cool merch ready as well, like t-shirts with the beautiful cover art by Gustave Doré and stickers. These can be purchased for supporting the band, together with CDs, also by contacting directly Josh at soturnusskullcrusher@gmail.com .
If you like to alternate your doom/sludge with your dose of old school nastiness and darkness, like in Beherit, Mystifier, Sarcófago, Bathory, old Morbid Angel, Deicide, Celtic Frost and so forth, then you’ll enjoy Bode Preto and their killer new album as well …
Words: Marilena Moroni
Official Website
For Streaming: http://bodepreto.com/album/inverted-blood-debut-album-out-now