Because every day another band records another song. Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck. Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm. Because this post was up last week for about a minute, but you didn’t see it, so here it is again. Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days) don’t know everything, Decibel brings you Throw Me a Frickin’ Label Hack.
Brazilian death metal is not, you know, without precedent. Teresina pair Bode Preto come from a powerful lineage of hulking death-dealing countrymen. The style won’t make you question any long-cherished musical beliefs, but debut full-length Inverted Blood, unleashed on unsuspecting (or, I suppose, very suspecting, since you’d have to know to link to it or search for it) world through Bode Preto’s Bandcamp site this past November, offers 25 minutes of cruel guitar blasphemies, ruling rhythms and battering riffs. This is the kind of stuff that the Maryland Deathfest crowd goes batshit for. Check out the title track from the record right here while you check out what the band had to say for itself.
Bode Preto is a duo? That’s a lot of noise for two people to make. How did you guys start working together?
Josh: Yes, now we are a duo. I play the guitar and vocals with Adelson Souza on the drums, we had few rehearsals as a duo before recording and it sounded very good to my ear, for the shows we will have a solo guitarist and a bassist as guests. We had Fábio Jhasko (formely Sarcófago) as a special guest doing solos on 3 songs and I recorded some layers of guitars that will sound better live with two guitars. I’m talking to a true shredder that is totally into our music to be that guitarist. I started to work with Adelson as a guest, he is someone I know from The Endoparasites since the beginning of the 90’s, but he got so much involved with the music and the band that one day he said “I’m an official member of Bode Preto”, and it is true.
Adelson: Listening to the songs Josh sent to me by email, the sound didn’t have yet the exact format of what was recorded. But there was something we knew could be better explored together. The confinement in Teresina far from my home in Rio de Janeiro catalyzed the concentration especially for what we intended to do. Nobody has ever travelled 3000 kilometers to record an underground band in Brazil.
Does Bode Preto’s music share common ground with what you played in your pre-Bode bands?
Josh: Yes, for me it’s a development of what I’ve been searching since I was 14 years old – I will be 35 next February – with the adding of the chaotic and powerful drums of Adelson. Bode Preto is the perfect band for me to express my true nature.
What was the band or album that most influenced you to start playing heavy music?
Josh: When I was 8 years old the music of The Beatles caught me like a hook in my ears, it was the first time I would enjoy music. After that I started to go after rock ‘n’ roll music as someone that found gold and knows that there’s more, listening obsessively to Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, Little Richard and the Brazilian star Raul Seixas. But when I got a Black Sabbath tape on my hands it was the gold mine revealed. I was 12 then, after that I kept on digging deeper and deeper…
Adelson: For me it was the Possessed “Seven Churches”, Accept “Restless And Wild”, Celtic Frost “Morbid Tales, Death “Leprosy”. Many heroes on the drums for me.
What are your current influences and musical loves?
Josh: I keep all those artists I mentioned before as musical loves. For Bode Preto we have influences of bands like Agathocles, Beherit, Mystifier, Sarcófago, Bathory, Hellhouse, Impaled Nazarene, old Morbid Angel, Deicide, Impurity (Brazil), Maniac Butcher…
Adelson: My heroes that always influenced me: Mike Sus, Dave Lombardo, Ken Owen, Reed St Mark, Pete Sandoval, Nicke Anderson, DD Crazy, Stefan Kaufmann, Bill Andrews, Curtis Beeson, Away, Gus Pynn, Tom Hunting, Mick Harris…
Who picked out the cover art for your releases? What drew you to those images?
Josh: The album is one piece but it has different parts – the music, the sounds, the artwork, in the same way that a tree has leaves, flowers and fruits. They have different colors, shapes and aspects, but they have the same essence which is fluid and spontaneous. I have chosen those images in that way of spontaneous creation that comes from the attention I gave to that. By synchronicity they are details from different works of the same person, the nineteenth century French artist Gustave Doré. They connect very much with our music and lyrics, helping to create those worlds.
What has your stage experience been like?
Josh: We were doing concerts as a trio before the previous drummer and bassist quit, [and] right now as I said we are recruiting two guest members to complete the quartet live and working for a Brazilian tour that will start in April.
If you could tour with any group of bands, what would your dream tour be?
Josh: Well if it’s a dream for sure Black Sabbath for their next album tour, and Bill Ward would be with them, hahaha! Bode Preto and Black Sabbath on tour, hahahaa! Plus Metallica with Cliff Burton also on the bill. But being more realistic, in [the] USA would be great to tour with Disgorge (I love that band and I know the guys since 1999 when we toured together in Brazil), Von Goat or Black Witchery also would be total detonation. Impurity, No Sense or Mystifier in Brazil and Carcass, Amebix or Beherit (if they were playing live) in Europe.
Adelson: Possessed, Morbid Angel, Venom…
Do you have any favorite moments or songs on Inverted Blood?
Adelson: “Children Of Suicide” and “Elytron”.
Josh: The break and what comes after that on “Serpent Inferior”, the very end of “Children of Suicide”, “Anunciação” and “Elytron (Succubus)” as a listener. “Mother of Ferocity” and “Black Mirror” as a player.
What are your plans for Bode Preto in the near future? What about long term plans?
Adelson: Consolidate a strong line up to do the gigs.
Josh: We have “Elytron (Succubus)” on the Fear Candy CD of February issue of Terrorizer magazine, we are answering some interviews and working with Speed Freak Agency in Brazil to make the tour I mentioned before. We had our music on the Necrosexual show which I think is cool. This year I have some personal business to take care in Europe (Holland) on the second semester, perhaps it can facilitate a tour over there. Long term plans [are] to keep on doing albums, keeping it heavy and saying what for me is worth [talking] about. I say “long term plans” because you use that but as we know we can die anytime. Thank you very much for the interest on Bode Preto, for me it’s always an honor when people want to talk about and listen to our stuff.
