Leandro Caçoilo , vocalist of Viper his musical journey in his teens and played in several bands, including a Christian metal band in the late 1990s. In an interview on the Colisão , the singer recalled this phase of his career and spoke out about prejudice.
After his time with Sacred Sinner , the singer was accepted into Eterna , a Catholic band with which he recorded four studio albums and one live album. “I was there for 10 years, and it was the band that propelled me into the metal scene. It was a very special time for Brazilian metal, from 1999 to 2005, people went to BMU [Brasil Metal Union], I played almost all of them,” he said. “It was really cool, a very special time. After that, I went through several bands until I joined Viper.”
When he joined the band, Caçoilo was a "non-practicing Catholic," but he became more frequent churchgoers after embracing the project. "Being part of a Christian band, you have to live it, it can't be a lie. And it was a very special time, I got to know many good things and also many bad things," he explained. "That was one of the reasons I'm no longer a Christian today. (...) In any church, any religion, there's a good side and a bad side."
The vocalist recounted that the band suffered prejudice from some religious groups for playing heavy metal. “We were going to do the dirty work, which is fishing in deeper waters. Even so, we didn't have the support of many people, and that was killing my faith in a way, because you saw the bad side of people,” he confessed. “I started to let go, I said, 'I don't need to talk about God to help people, I can show a positive side instead of closing off your way of interpreting a word.' (…) I saw many things that I didn't like.”
Unfortunately, this prejudice wasn't just from people in the church, but also reached the metal scene. "There's even a funny episode at BMU with the black metal band called Ocultan; we played on a different day than them, and they incited the crowd to shout 'Hey, Eterna, go f*** yourself.' That kind of stuck in my head at the time," Caçoilo recounted. "I don't care, I'm sorry. We played anyway and headlined that day."
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