By Kelley Simms
NERVOSA IN THE USA
B
razilian all-female thrash trio, Nervosa, have been shaking up the metal world since their 2010 formation. On their sophomore release, Agony, Nervosa proves that they deserve the respect of the metal community.
Offering up the vicious growls of bassist / vocalist Fernanda Lira, the thunderous drumming of Pitchu Ferraz’ s and the relentless riffing from guitarist Prika Amaral, the band performs as a highly dynamic and lethal unit. In just six years, the band has gained massive momentum and is about to embark on a U. S. tour beginning this month. Caught In A Mosh columnist Kelley Simms spoke with Miss Lira about the band’ s new album and more.
Nervosa
Photo: Gustovo Vara
Mosh: What made you decide to form a three-piece thrash band? Fernanda Lira: After I left my previous band, I decided I wanted to make something different. I was really into thrash metal at that time – and I still am! So as I always liked to play with girls – all my previous bands were all-girl bands, I thought it would be something great and super new to have an all-girl thrash trio. I think we still have just a few women playing, the more the coolest. So I decided it would be a good idea. Then I started looking for girls who wanted to commit to a band the way I wanted and that was a hard task. After almost giving up I bumped into Prika, who already had this project with a drummer and was in a real need of a singer and a bassist, so we kinda completed each other. They were exactly what I was needing and I was exactly what they were looking for!
Mosh: Hailing from Sao Paulo— the birthplace of Sepultura— how could they not be an influence? What did they mean to you while growing up? Fernanda Lira: I think Sepultura was one of the most important bands for Brazilian metalheads. They were the band that showed us that yes, it is possible to be South American, play extreme metal and yet succeed! To us they are a huge inspiration on how to make things work and how to carry the metal flag all around. There ' s also many other Brazilian bands that we like and that also influenced us in many different ways, too. I would personally say Ratos de Porão, Torture Squad and Claustrofobia among my favorites and most influential.
Mosh: It’ s great to see three amazing women really going for it by playing brutal thrash! Are you out to prove that " chicks " can rock just as hard as dudes? Fernanda Lira: I ' ve always supported women in arts and have always been active on this matter, so i ' m really glad that we can do our part on inspiring more women to be out there living their dreams. I mean, that ' s not the only purpose of the band, we play metal because we like to play metal. But if with our music and attitude we can help girls not to feel discouraged by society to do whatever they want, including having an extreme metal band, then it makes us even happier and fulfilled.
Mosh: When first starting out did you get sexist resistance, especially in Brazil, for being an all female thrash band? Fernanda Lira: A lot. At the beginning it was pretty tough. Brazil is a beautiful country in many ways, but still it can be real sexist sometimes. So when we started, there was always a handful of people who would try to discourage us on taking the band where we wanted. Not only with rude comments on the internet, but also spreading senseless gossip around, like ' they can only get shows because they sleep with promoters,’ or ' they send nudes to get sponsors ' and other stupid kinds of things. But it was always just a few people who did that, the majority always supported us. So what we did was not care about this kind of thing with time. I mean, critics we can take. I think critics are always welcome to help us improve as humans and as musicians. But this kind of stuff, we just started ignoring and focusing mainly on the people who actually like what we were doing and who supported us as a way of supporting more girls in metal. So nowadays, it ' s completely cool, there ' s no more of this kind of thing almost. I think with time people realized we are here playing metal because we like it.
Mosh: How’ d you go about constructing the songs for Agony? Fernanda Lira: It was actually pretty natural. We never set how we want to sound or anything like that. We just write in a very organic way, respecting our influences and ideas. So Agony is nothing but the result of what we had been listening to at that time and also the spontaneous ideas that came to our minds while writing the songs. The three of us, for example, were listening to a lot of death metal and faster thrash metal when we were writing it, so that ' s why it ' s faster and more aggressive than the previous one.
Mosh: With all the corruption and dirty
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34 illinoisentertainer. com august 2016