Fury – the history and stories of heavy metal in Brazil
Preface (aka Carmina Burana)
By Luiz Cesar Pimentel & Wikimetal
Brazil was a very strange country in 1985 and 1986. Presidential elections weren't held – the first president after the political opening was Tancredo Neves, who died before taking office, unintentionally leaving behind the disastrous legacy of José Sarney and his Cruzado Plan, which brought the country to its knees. Cable TV didn't exist, and the country would stop to watch Roque Santeiro at night, or Sala Especial (softcore porn) on Fridays. The generational traumas were the discovery of the ozone layer and the danger of Halley's Comet passing by. And, of course, the escalating number of HIV-positive cases, then known as AIDS patients. Or even worse, those infected by the "gay plague.".
São Paulo was even stranger back then, because the flow of information wasn't like it is today, and the city was even more of a representative hub of the country. The mayor was Jânio Quadros, elected with the jingle "Sweep, sweep, little broom…". The big plan for kids was to go to a movie theater on Paulista Avenue, watch the big hits like "Back to the Future" and "The Goonies," and then grab a bite to eat at one of the two McDonald's restaurants on that iconic avenue.
But what I remember most from the mid-1980s is how hot it was. It's a memory that almost evokes a physical feeling. Certainly because, regardless of the weather and temperature, the uniform my friends and I wore never deviated from tight black pants (almost like a tourniquet at the ankle), white high-top Pony sneakers, a black t-shirt, a leather (or rather, faux leather) motorcycle-style jacket with a crisscrossed zipper on the chest, and a denim vest with a patch covering the entire back.
This was the scene with the group of headbangers on a traditional Saturday morning in front of Woodstock Discos, on the slope of Rua Doutor Falcão, in the city center. It was like this every Saturday.
Woodstock was the headbanger social network in São Paulo at the time. You could say it was the Brazilian social network, since people came from all over Brazil to learn about and consume the latest metal music, like the Cavalera brothers. “Walcir (Chalas, the store owner) knew about the danger Max (Cavalera) and I were in, so he opened the store early just so we could buy things. Then we’d take the bus back to Belo Horizonte and record millions of tapes for everyone,” Igor Cavalera recounted in a recent interview, narrating the epic journey before forming Sepultura with his brother.
Around 1000 headbangers passed through the store every Saturday. The store was packed, people chatting, exchanging cassette tapes on the sidewalk in front, when a lone metal nightmare emerged from the crowd, a bald guy from ABC (an acronym for the three industrial cities in the metropolitan region of São Paulo: Santo André, São Bernardo, and São Caetano).
The situation of skinheads at the time was quite confusing. Broadly speaking, there was no political alignment with the working class of society. It wasn't a revolt against unemployment or the garbage crisis, as it had been in England, but it sounded and the members acted more like a revolt for the sake of revolt, simply. Within this (or lack thereof) context, polarization and hatred against headbangers were born.
The feeling wasn't mutual. I can say this because I was part of the dark, hairy side of the force. I started going to Galeria do Rock when it only had Baratos Afins (classic rock, new rock, and heavy metal), Grilo Falante (more classic and less metal), and Punk Rock Discos (punk, skinhead, and the like). I'd spend hours wandering between the three and every now and then I'd run into one of my idols from the punk/hardcore movement, like Clemente (Inocentes), Fábio (Olho Seco and also the store owner), or Rédson (Cólera). In other words, there was no hatred from headbangers. There was no love either. There was admiration for the music. But for reasons unknown, the skinheads adopted us as enemies, and every week we heard about cases of headbangers getting beaten up.
Going back to the morning from three paragraphs ago, a bald guy from ABC showed up amidst the metal crowd. Most of the people there were kids (like me) and interested only in music (like me) and not in fighting, and we silently hoped it was a false alarm and that he would leave without stress.
He didn't think that way.
It started causing trouble, until it managed to start a fight with a headbanger who was also from the ABC region – they were the older and less patient side of the metal crowd than us.
They started rolling around on the ground of the sloping Rua Doutor Falcão until the skinhead pulled out a hatchet (they used to carry one) and was disarmed by the headbanger, who used the weapon against its owner and plunged the blade into the back of his head, near the nape of his neck.
I remember a sepulchral silence at that moment. In fact, the whole scene was so powerful and representative that it comes back to me in flashes, almost 30 years later.
The next flash shows skinhead walking up the street cursing and making death threats to passersby, still with the hatchet stuck in his head.
A true story. More than shocking, it almost completely represents what the Brazilian heavy metal movement was like in its genesis.
We were and still are the underground rats of Brazilian popular music (after all, who in Brazilian music is more popular abroad than Sepultura? Tom Jobim? Okay. But second place is considerable).
We were born and gathered in the dirty center of the city. Hidden (or concealed) from the television scene. But we weren't interested in seeing or being seen. Because even as those whom television doesn't show, to this day, we are the only ones of a movement that still fills stadiums at concerts, like Metallica and AC/DC. We are millions. In the underground. Like rats.
But we've always been there for the music. Whether it was trading tapes at a store entrance, or in magazine pages we created that are still in circulation today, or on the internet and now in book form. Because our basic principle is simple: live your life the way you want, just as I live mine, and if there's a difference between us, it's that I like extreme music. That doesn't make me a maniac. But it doesn't make me a coward either. On the contrary. It's a philosophy we're proud of. Epic, I'd say.
Like all epics, it has its heroes. Here they are. The saga has begun.
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Read Chapter 1: Nativity In Black.
Read the Introduction to the book Fury.
Help write the history of Heavy Metal in Brazil. Leave your comment; it may end up in the book, and your name will be in the credits, as this is the first collaborative, evolving, and innovative book written by all those who love Heavy Metal and want to record the history of Metal in Brazil.