After nearly four months, the wait is over. I set off from Rio de Janeiro at 8:30am on a seven hour bus to the large unremarkable interior city of Belo Horizonte in order to get an extreme metal fix, and see some old friends and a new city in the process.
It's remarkable how heavy metal remains so popular here in Brazil, as it's very expensive to be a metalhead, or a fan of foreign music in general, in this country. For example, a pack of strings is three times the price as back home, and an effects pedal I bought a year ago in England is over twice the price here. If you want to buy an instrument that isn't stocked here (quite possibly), you have to pay 60% import tax, plus shipping - a lot of money. This protectionalist economic bloc policy may (or may not, I really don't know much about it in all honesty) have a myriad of advantages in the trade of other goods, but it's undoubtably surpressing musicians here. Then there's the cost of gigs. Unless you're lucky enough to live in a big city in the south of the country, you'll probably have to travel for hours, if not days to see an international act. Even after the expenses incurred by the bus/flight, the gig prices are more than expensive back home - for example, Vader (the band I saw in Belo) played Leeds in March, charging £12 for tickets, yet I paid 50 reais to see them in Brazil, which is over £20. However, most metalheads here justify this by the fact that gigs with international acts are few and far between - you could watch a quality metal band almost every week somewhere in England, whereas Brazilians have to wait sometimes months between shows.
Belo Horizonte is probably the metal capital of Brazil, the equivalent of Birmingham in England. The similarities are apparent - both are large, fairly bland and landlocked industrial cities. It's the place where Brazil's favourite metal sons Sepultura originated, as well as underground legends Sarcófago (whose original singer/guitarist Wanger Lamounier, in a rather bizarre twist, is now an economics professor at the main university in Belo, where my friends are studying). For this reason Belo is not often ignored by international bands touring the country.
Although I've been to many better gigs this year, this one will be remembered fondly nonetheless. Opening were a fairly cringeworthy generic local Black Metal act, who I didn't actually see, given the advice of my Brazilian friend who I went to the show with. Needless to say, a band whose drummer labels himself 'Guardian of the Forest' (in a non-ironic way) puts me off before even hearing their music. Following them were Ragnarok, who played fairly straightforward old-school Norwegian Black Metal, which was enjoyable if only for the fact that it was the first time I'd heard a blastbeat live in 5 months. Taking the stage at 12:30am were headliners Vader, who 27 years into their existence are still going strong. They hammered out some of their finest Eastern-Bloc metal, with plenty from classic album De Profundis (ranked by Terrorizer as the 20th best Death Metal album ever), which mixed well with the more groove-orientated newer stuff. Having played for an hour that was that and my first Brazilian metal gig was over. Kudos to frontman/guitarist Piotr Wiwczarek, who is the only surviving original member of the band and still has a great amount of passion and gusto for his craft - whether you think playing a small club in Belo Horizonte is worth over a quarter of a century of work or not, you've got to admire the dedication, or insanity, depending on your point of view.
Jack
