Vulcano

Biography

Vulcano is a Brazilian extreme metal band from Santos, São Paulo. Founded in 1981, it is one of the first noteworthy Brazilian heavy metal bands. Terrorizer said about their influence on Latin American black metal, "many believe that Vulcano not only kick-started musical blasphemy in Brazil, but throughout the whole of Latin America". Vulcano influenced Sepultura.

History

Zhema Paul Magrão and Carli Cooper formed Vulcano in 1981 in Santos, São Paulo, Brazil. Due to the date, Vulcano is regarded as one of the first Brazilian and Latin American extreme metal bands. Unlike the extreme metal scenes in Europe and the United States, Brazil's counterpart did not develop out of an existing scene. Early bands like Vulcano built a network to promote and support their live performances. It was difficult to purchase standard performing equipment.
The band's first record, Om Pushne Namah, was released in 1983. It differs from most early extreme metal in that the lyrics were sung in Portuguese, not English. Jose Piloni (drums) left the band after the album release. At the time, it was difficult to secure live performances. Promotion was limited to posters. The band produced their own shows. Vulcano released the demo Devil on My Roof in 1984.
Vulcano released a live recording, Live!, in 1985, to target audiences outside Santos. Live! was recorded in August in the city of Americana, without any mixing, and with a lineup of Zhema (bass), Soto Junior (guitar), Zé Flávio (guitar), Lauder Piloni (drums) and Angel (vocals). This prepared Vulcano to record their first studio album, Bloody Vengeance, in 1986. In the years following, the band released Anthropophagy (1987) and Who Are the True (1988). Throughout this period, Vulcano got access to increasingly better production as the metal scene in Brazil grew further. However, after releasing their fifth album Rat Race in 1990, Vulcano stopped releasing new albums for several years. In this period of reflection the Vulcano still did some live shows, but the only official release from the band was a Cogumelo Records compilation from 2000 with a re-release of the song "Bloody Vengeance".
In December 2001, Vulcano were taken by surprise by the death of Soto Jr. (guitar), who died of high blood pressure. In 2004, Vulcano created its own label Renegados Records and staged a comeback with a new album entitled Tales from the Black Book with Zhema (bass), Angel (vocals), Arthur Von Barbarian (drums), Andre Martins (guitar) and Claudio Passamani (guitar). In 2006 Vulcano released two new songs in a split vinyl titled Thunder Metal with Nifelheim from Sweden, with the songs "The Evil Always Return" and "Suffered Souls". In 2009, Vulcano released another album, Five Skulls and One Chalice.
In 2010, Angel left the band again. In his place, Vulcano recruited Luiz Carlos Louzada (Hierarchical Punishment, Chemical Disaster) to assist in the band's first tour in Europe, the so-called Bloody Vengeance Tour in Europe 2010, which went through 14 countries, playing 18 shows.
In 2011, the band invited Arthur Von Barbarian to resume the sticks and record the album Drowning in Blood, released in September through Renegados Records.
In 2013, they released The Man the Key the Beast, and made their third European tour together with the band Nifelheim in the Thunder Metal tour followed by a Brazilian tour and established with Zhema (guitar), Luiz Louzada (vocals), Arthur Von Barbarian and Ivan Pellicciotti the Darkest (bass guitar, who has been also Vulcano's producer since 2005).

Musical style and legacy

Vulcano heavily influenced the music of fellow Brazilian metal band Sepultura. According to Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic: "Vulcano's albums were far too inaccessible to surface above the heavy metal underground with any regularity; and yet, alongside fellow Brazilians Sarcofago, Mutilator, and others, their primal, astoundingly violent blend of black and thrash metal has attained a worldwide cult legend among some of the genre's most extreme practitioners -- notably, Norway's feared black metal inner circle of the early '90s."

Band members

Zhema Rodero – guitar (1981–present)
Arthur Von Barbarian – drums (1987–present)
Luiz Carlos – vocals (1997–1999, 2010–present)
Ivan Pellicciotti The Darkest – bass guitar (2013–present)

Studio albums

Bloody Vengeance (1986)
Anthropophagy (1987)
Who Are the True (1988)
Ratrace (1990)
Tales from the Black Book (2004)
Five Skulls and One Chalice (2009)
Drowning in Blood (2011)
The Man the Key the Beast (2013)
Wholly Wicked (2014)
XIV (2016)
Eye in Hell (2020)
Stone Orange (2022)
Epilogue (2024)

Demos and EPs

Om Pushne Namah (1983)
Devil on My Roof (1984)

Live albums

Live! (1985)
Live II! Stockholm Stormed (2014)

Splits

Thunder Metal (2006) with Nifelheim
Panzer Fest 2 (2013)