Interview by Marcela Lorenzetti and Yannick Sasaki.
Text by Yannick Sasaki.
Last Friday, the 15th, Wikimetal 89 FM radio to interview Rancore. The band reunited once again, coming out of the hiatus they went on in 2014. Besides their show at Lollapalooza 2024 next Friday, the 22nd, the tour includes dates in Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Goiânia, Ceará, Paraíba, Sergipe, Bahia, and Espírito Santo.
The band has seen increased popularity since the beginning of their hiatus, winning over new listeners and selling out venues every time they've reunited in recent years, reconnecting with their visceral audience in Brazil's main capitals.
Teco Martins (vocals), Candinho Uba (guitar), Gustavo Teixeira (guitar), Rodrigo Caggegi (bass), and Ale Iafelice (drums) spoke with our team and told us more about their whirlwind tour across the country, future plans, connections, and musical diversity.
Check out the full interview:
Wikimetal: How exciting and rewarding is it to reunite with an even more passionate audience every time you get together?
Teco Martins: Oh, it's very powerful! It's a collective catharsis there, I think there's a pent-up feeling, both from us and from the people, right? I think there's this urgency of knowing if the band is coming back, will it never come back? Will it never come back… It's back! It's fleeting, isn't it?
So, I think it generates a feeling of urgency and explosion, like the eruption of a volcano, and not just from the audience with us, of course, it's a response, an exchange of energy there, right? To reunite with those people who are so important, valuable, right? Brothers in arms on your life's journey, it's even difficult to put into words, but it's very special, very rewarding and a privilege to be able to experience all this.
Rodrigo Caggegi: It's incredible! It's also really cool to see the new people, it's great to see all the people who went to the shows when the band was active, and to see a lot of new people too. People in their early twenties, who were around 12 at the time.
So it's crazy for me, for all of us, to see this new audience that followed the band, even when the band was on hiatus. Total happiness for us and immense gratitude to all the fans who follow the band, whether they're new or old fans.
WM: What are Rancore's plans now that they've signed with Balaclava Records? Can fans expect new things? Is a new album, an EP, a single, anything new for the fans coming out?
Candinho Uba: We want to do something new, that's the main idea. Even though I personally think our material has aged very well in these almost 10 years, you never know if it's going to become dated, right? And I don't think it has, but even so, we really want to do something new. We don't know if it will be an album, an EP…
Today we're leaving here and going to rehearsal. We're exchanging a lot of ideas, talking a lot about what each of us thinks, what each of us has in mind, what we imagine, what we think is cool about this time that has passed, looking back and reviewing the songs and the work and what is special with today's perspective. It's still a little early to say what it will actually be, but yes, doing something new is our greatest desire.
WM: What are the band's main influences today?
TM: That's a complex topic, because where are we going to find the intersection between us, right? I think the biggest challenge in composing new songs is that, over the years, each of us has walked very different paths, but I think that's very enriching, this plurality of influences, I think it can result in something unique.
Author's note: Teco suggested the Malian singer and guitarist Ali Farkatouri, Candinho chose Aphex Twin , Gustavo cited the defunct band Title Fight, Rodrigo went with Dexter, a legend of Brazilian rap, while Ale recommended blink-182.
WM: Which bands do you most want to see at Lollapalooza 2024? Rancore : blink-182, Arcade Fire, The Offspring, Baiana System, Marcelo D2 and Dexter.
WM: Which city are you most excited to revisit on this whirlwind tour?
TM: The tour started last week in Florianópolis and Porto Alegre, both sold-out shows, full houses, it was intense. But it also highlighted that touring isn't just about the fun part; touring is demanding, it requires physical effort, concentration, and patience.
The Oxigênio Festival and the Hangar 110 shows were in São Paulo, so there wasn't all that stuff about taking planes, waiting, hotel check-in, soundcheck, sleeping away from home, having to rush to check luggage and instruments onto the plane, eating outside of mealtimes… it requires physical, emotional, and spiritual preparation as well.
But for me, what makes it most worthwhile is that I also have this opportunity while they're dismantling the equipment; I often get to go talk to people. I really enjoy doing this and feeling people's emotions, their gratitude, their happiness, their tears, their laughter, the hugs at the end of the show, seeing that you helped provide that with something you believe in, in this case, our music.
That's something that's worth more to me than any fee. In each place you notice the cultural differences, the cultural richness of our country, how each audience reacts to the same songs, but they end up being different because of the audience interaction. Having this opportunity to travel in a country as culturally rich as Brazil and experience that is sensational, it's a huge privilege, a truly immeasurable wealth.
WM: What was the most memorable show from your adolescence, the one that made you switch and want to have a band?
Ale Iafelice: I have a very memorable show, which was the first show I went to at Hangar 110, I was 14 or 15 years old and I remember Zumbis do Espaço , Carbona , a band from Rio de Janeiro, it was the first mosh pit of my life! That moment was very significant for me, so I've already adopted it as a dream to be on that stage, you know? I want to be there with my band.
RC: My journey in the music scene really started in the punk circuit, including frequenting Hangar 110. Something I always found interesting, maybe it doesn't have much to do with the question, but it's something I carry with me in my life that has to do with Rancore, at Hangar 110 it's a place where you get very close to the artist and I could see in the punk scene I frequented that the artist wasn't on a pedestal, that they weren't unreachable, they were someone you could approach and chat with after the show…
Knowing a little about the person's life, what the person likes, what the person does, and I think that's something Rancore maintains to this day (...) Even though the band has grown, I think it's very difficult for us to talk about our audience and call people fans. That's a word we rarely use, we say audience because for us they are people who are there making it happen with us.
Candinho Uba: For me it wasn't a show, it was when my brother started rehearsing with his first band, which was also punk/hardcore. I had never seen everyone playing so loud, everyone so close together, they played so well and that's when I was very impressed, I could also see that it wasn't a superhero musician, it was my brother, even though he is a superhero to me.
TM: It started very early for me, I was always the singer in the school presentation since kindergarten. In my school, which was called Repolinho, I was the one who dressed up as a puppy and sang, so since I was a child I've been the guy who sings. It's something that was born with me. At 11 years old I formed my first band and for me that was already very serious, I already wanted to drop out of school, I wanted to live off my band!
But if there was something that marked me at the beginning of my journey, I would say it was the first time I went to a "verdurada," which was a straight edge . It was something very traditional in that punk/hardcore scene, but geared towards straight edge . I went when I was 15 or 16 years old, the first time it cost 2 reais to get in and it was very aggressive, even though it was a place where nobody drank, nobody used drugs, nobody ate meat. The show was extra aggressive, total aggression from the audience, and then suddenly it would stop and everyone would sit down to watch a film about veganism.
WM: What can new Rancore fans expect from the tour shows? These new fans who discovered the band through streaming and will now have their first opportunity to experience the catharsis of attending their first Rancore show, what can they expect?
TM: It might seem like I'm selling our product here, but I'm being completely sincere. I believe our live show is much better than what we recorded on tape. It's a personal thing, I don't know if they agree, but I would have done some things differently on our albums.
At the time, we did the best we could, what we believed in, but in retrospect, I think it didn't represent Rancore and its essence so well. I think maybe it came across as a little too clean. We're a little dirtier, a little more violent, I think more visceral, and the live show is where that's shown, right? So, in a way, it's even cool, because when people encounter the Rancore of the live show, they find something totally new. And I think a band, even in this style, punk rock, hardcore, rock, right? I think the band has to be better live than on the record, in my opinion.
People who go to the show end up being surprised, not only because of us, not only because we're better musicians now than we were when we recorded, we have more experience, but that's what it's like live, right? It's happening.
But also because of the audience. The relationship between the audience and Rancore is very different. We really have a symbiosis there, between the artist and the audience.
We don't want fans, we don't want to be influencers, we don't want to be celebrities. We're musicians, we make some music, you like it, but we have our value, just like a firefighter, just like a cleaner, just like a cook, like a journalist, like a photographer. Everyone has their value, right? We don't want to stay in that musician's place. We're not special, we just make music.
Candinho Uba: On that point, what Teco said, about the show being better… the word is a bit strong, but I think that one thing that motivated me to come back is that I think this was a small failure for the band. We weren't able to express, to materialize what we wanted in the recordings, in the sound recordings, as well as we do with the shows, right? Largely due to a lack of knowledge.
TM: That's the idea. More than just doing this tour and this reunion, it's about truly capturing a recording that genuinely represents what you said, what you saw at the show. That's something that really gives you goosebumps, right? It's a huge challenge.
The live show is one thing, and the recording is another. But I think Rancore really deserved to be immortalized in a recording that better represented the band. We want to make new music, whether it will come out or not, that's a mystery of the universe, right?
How are we going to find that intersection between us? I think it's quite possible, and we're all very motivated to make it happen. So, for now, I'm not going to promise anything. Not before we do it.
WM: I'm sure something new is coming!
TM: God willing!
