(Fernando Souza Filho, Rock Brigade #67, February '92)
Sarcófago is
one of those bands that you either love or hate, and that's even
a part of the Bazilain metal folklore. The band's career started
on '86 when they took part on the compilation Warfare Noise
I with two tracks that shocked by both its lyrics and music,
extremely violent for those days. On the same year the LP I.N.R.I.
was released, where they assumed for once their black metal
sound, hailed by some and hated by others. The polemics that
Sarcófago always caused was consolidated on '89 with the
releasing of the album Rotting, a great success in
Brazil as well as on the foreign. By the end of '91 a revolution
happened with the four guys from Minas: The Laws of Scourge.
Accurate production and lyrical-musical maturing are latent
characteristics since the first auditioning of this album.
Rock Brigade wanted to know how this changing process took place,
besides curiosities like their fight with Ratos de Porão; so
there goes an exclusive interview with Wagner (guitars/vocals),
Fábio (guitars), and Gerald (bass).
RB - The
album The Laws of Scourge
is more thrash than the previous efforts, including acoustic
passages and longer tunes, is this the current tendency of
Sarcófago?
WAGNER
LAMOUNIER - I wouldn't say that our music became thrash,
what we try to do nowadays is what the guys on the foreign call
techno-death metal, and a lot of people confuse it with thrash.
There's a natural tendency on the bands to make some more
elaborated work. The acoustic stuff and the keyboards sound fine
when placed on the correct times and places.
FÁBIO JHASKO - It's a more elaborated stuff but
without losing the band's characteristics.
GERALD MINELLI - We wanna show that death metal
has its musical values, that's why we keep evolving on each
record.
RB - Why
did you decide to re-record The Black Vomit?
GERALD
- That music was our vynil debut and it had a lot of recognition.
The foreign guys there don't know it as well as the songs from Rotting,
that's why we wanted to make a better recording.
WAGNER - It was never released on our LPs, only
on that compilation Warfare Noise I, which had a great
recognitin by those days but almost nobody knows it nowadays.
It's a tune that the guys always ask on the shows, we couldn't
let it out, it's a gift for the band's fans.
FÁBIO - Sarcófago re-records a song on every
album (laughs)...
WAGNER - But on the next one there will be no
more re-recordings.
GERALD - The fountain has dried! (laughs)
RB -
Keyboardist Eugênio has taken part on Sarcófago's gigs and
recordings, is he already a band member?
WAGNER
- Eugênio is not playing with us anymore, we got another
keyboardist, Vanir, who is a kind of free-lancer on the band.
GERALD - He is a hired musician to play with us
on every date of this tour. Eugênio works in studio with bands
from Belo Horizonte, but he's still a friend of ours.
WAGNER - He is very good, but he's married and
can't follow us on gigs. Now Vanir plays guitars and keyboards
very well, but we found him just recently. Maybe on the next
album he'll play again with us, not as member but as a special
guest, after all, we don't use keyboards on all our songs.
RB - Will
this album be released on CD on the foreign as well?
WAGNER
- Yes, through the same label that released Rotting,
Music For Nations/Under One Flag.
GERALD - We intend to release this CD in Brazil
too.
RB - Are
you posers?
WAGNER
- (laughing) That's too relative. From the moment that you're on
a band and gotta have pics taken, you're exposing yourself, then
everybody is a poser... On the bad sense of the word, of poser as
being those "dools" like Bon Jovi and those wimp bands,
we are definitely not!
GERALD - In the beginning we gave too much
attention to the looks, maybe even more than for the music
itself, but we face the band with a bit of theatre, as if we were
characters.
FÁBIO - It was to really draw attention.
WAGNER - A live performance is not complete only
with the music. A guy doesn't go to the show only for the music,
he wants to see how the band looks. If you go upon the stage with
the clothes that you wear on the street, it doesn't cause an
impact as a well produced look. We're fans of bands who promote
this feature, like Kiss and Alice Cooper.
RB - Why
did you abandon the "heavy" look?
WAGNER
- We only took away the pins 'cos it was hard to play with all
that. If we could, we'd play like that nowadays.
GERALD - If we would use one or two bracelets
there would be no problem, but we used pins even over our balls
(laughs). That really gets in the way. We would leave the shows
pierced with pins all around, it was too dangerous.
RB - And
what about the lyrics, which are less satanic?
WAGNER
- In the beginning, due to the influence of Venom and Hellhammer,
we were like 16 years old and thought it was cool. Then our ideas
started to mature, trying to spread something more real and not
some teenager's fantasy... But we still keep our anti-religion
posture. We tried to express it back then but we didn't know how
to do it, that's why we appealed to satanism. We're agnostic and
completely against any kind of religion.
RB - Do
you still like older tunes?
WAGNER
- We do. We like old Black Sabbath and Kiss, besides AC/DC with
Bon Scott. What matters is if it's not a commercial thing.
GERALD - But we also like a lot these new bands
like Paradise Lost, Deicide, Bolt Thrower, Godflesh, Morbid
Angel. We tried to get some of it because this means culture too.
It's important for us as musicians, it's useless to abominate
something.
RB - How
are the old fans seeing this new step of Sarcófago?
WAGNER
- The guys who like Sarcófago since the beginning are digging
our evolution and enjoying it just fine. Now there are some
radical guys like the fans of Necrobutcher, who kept saying that
everybody wimped out and now they're all playboys! They don't
even listen to heavy music anymore! There are a lot of guys who
pose as radical just to show up and a year later he doesn't even
listen to metal music. Our old fans follow us to this very day.
RB - So
that old radicalism is almost extincted, isn't it?
GERALD
- That is already past both for Brasil and the rest of the world.
WAGNER - But there are radicals still around.
The guy starts listening to what's the most extreme, like Napalm
Death and Carcass, and thinks that the rest is "soft".
On the next day he had his hair cut and became a playboy.
RB - Does
the success of Sepultura on the foreign scene help opening paths
for bands like Sarcófago?
FÁBIO
- No, 'cos every path that Sepultura opens for them is closed for
Sarcófago.
WAGNER - Exactly. Sepultura wants to be the only
Brazilian band on the foreign scene. They're on the top but want
to keep this place only for them.
GERALD - We saw foreign mags in which they say
that they're the only good band in Brazil, and the rest is made
of cover bands.
RB - So
Sarcófago is opening a completely different path, isn't it?
WAGNER
- Sarcófago created a name of their own on the foreign
independently of Sepultura. A lot of people already knew
Sarcófago before they know Sepultura.
RB -
Wagner lives in Uberlândia, Gerald in Belo Horizonte, Fábio in
São Paulo and Lúcio (drummer) in Araguari, how do you conceal
this distance with the band's commitments?
GERALD
- It's a matter of determination. Over the last couple of years I
lost all weekends just travelling to practice and make gigs. Even
on vacations we stick together, it's a an investment on the band.
WAGNER - To record this LP we spent twio months
rehearsing and eating Gerald's rice, which sucks (laughs). We
would starve, but rehearsing every day.
FÁBIO - The worst was when the toilet paper was
over, and every time I used the bathroom I had to take a shower
(laughs)...
WAGNER - Fábio doesn't like to have a shower
and had to spend the whole day going to the shower (laughs).
GERALD - He had to take an Aspirin 'cos he got a
fever of taking so much shower! (laughs)
RB - On an
interview to Rock Brigade, Gordo of Ratos de Porão mentioned his
fight with Sarcófago, what's your version for the case?
WAGNER
- Everybody knows that Sepultura and we don't get along since old
issues back in Belo Horizonte. What happened was the following:
Ratos went to play in BH and some of our fans kept bashing the
guys, spitting on them. Max of Sepultura, who was there, told
Gordo that the "guys" of Sarcófago were the ones
spitting. They generalized the fact as if Sarcófago had ruined
their show. Well, we know the staff of Roadrunner on the foreign
and we knew that Ratos' latest LP is a huge failure of sales on
the foreign, that's why they're playing on shows like Angélica's
and Marianne's. [webmaster's
note: TV morning shows for small children, similar to Barney the
Dinosaur] But in Brazil that
doesn't work, the audience here will always be limited, it's
useless to go to these shows. To show up even more, they bash aus
and even invented this story in BH. When we played here with
D.R.I., they got on the backstage and made a huge mess just to
promote themselves. It's a marketing play. They don't accept the
fact thar we're growing up in a humble way out there while
they're going down.
RB - What
the fans of Sarcófago can expect for this year?
WAGNER
- We'll make a tour throughout Brazil and on March I'll go to
England to book a tour around there.