Angra returned to São Paulo last Saturday, the 2nd, with the 20th anniversary tour of the album Rebirth . With an extensive setlist of more than two hours, the band celebrated its own legacy beyond the album in a show for fans of decades and newcomers alike.
The band has been on the road with this tour since June and will still play six shows across the country, with the possibility of another leg of the tour in December , when drummer Bruno Valverde will be free again after fulfilling commitments with Smith/Kotzen in the United States.
Before the highly anticipated arrival of Angra, the audience noticed another drum kit set up on stage, indicating an opening band that had been kept secret. At 9 PM, the screen revealed the name of the Minas Gerais band Medjay , who had already attended this tour's show in Belo Horizonte, opening the night with power metal inspired by Egyptian mythology.
With stylish outfits, the band mentored by Rafael Bittencourt on their debut album, Sandstorm (2021), the group formed by Samuka Vilaça (bass), Freddy Daniels (guitar), Riccardo Linassi (drums) and Phil Lima (vocals and guitar), accompanied by Marco Herrera (Arabic percussion) and Rafael Agostino (keyboards), was received with enthusiasm by the audience, with sincere applause and attentive eyes on the band's performance.
With a touch of theatricality and a hint of Andre Matos in Phil's charismatic appearance and stage presence, the band delivered a competent performance of a setlist of just five songs, enough time to plant the seed of recognition for a promising and capable group, but perhaps not enough to completely win over the open-hearted audience.
When Medjay said goodbye, Angra's fans were already ready to welcome the main attraction of the night. In the audience, there were couples and entire families, with children learning to appreciate their parents' musical taste, in addition to a sea of black t-shirts with the band's logo from different eras.
Amidst shouts for the band, the audience still had to watch the trailer for the series Garimpeiro do Rock & El Baron , by Paulo Baron , which aims to go "hunting for rockstars" throughout Brazil and take them to the world, before the show's intro finally began to fulfill the requests of the loyal audience present.
Unlike their first visit to the city, when Angra performed at the small Espaço Leste, facing technical problems and delays after a long bus trip for Fabio Lione and members of the team, the show at Tokio Marine Hall, formerly Tom Brasil, showcased the band in their preferred habitat, with a spacious stage and grand lighting to perform for more than four thousand people – and that was just in person, as the show had sold-out in-person tickets and also featured a live pay-per-view broadcast .
Despite being a celebratory show for the album that marked Edu Falaschi in the band in the early 2000s, with the tracklist presented in its entirety, the tour's setlist isn't limited to this territory of nostalgia and glory, also including Ømni (2018) with "Black Widow's Web" right at the beginning of the set. Even though these "intruder" tracks are well-received by an enthusiastic audience, nothing compares to the effect of the anniversary album on the crowd.
The show in São Paulo featured Bittencourt and Lione thanking the fans, "mixing up" the languages before finally speaking in Portuguese and inviting the audience to repeat vocal exercises impossible for amateurs. But it's in the performance of the songs that the band truly communicates, with Valverde's ferocious drumming, Felipe Andreoli Marcelo Barbosa 's guitar .
With the Rebirth , the band still performed seven songs, and the audience's energy didn't remain the same in the final segment, returning only during "Bleeding Heart" and "Carry On".
Watching the live audience reactions, from fans crying at the barrier to headbanging in the crowd, there's no doubt about how successful the band continues to be, capable of delivering an electrifying experience even while evoking nostalgia from two decades ago, but without the presumption of taking the audience back to the heyday of the album era.
Check out exclusive photos taken by our contributor Leca Suzuki .
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