D.E.R.

It's only fitting that I follow up the Test interview with another band from Brazil that is also killing the game right now. My band got to play before D.E.R(who also share the same drummer of Test), at Obscene Extreme Mexico, and they destroyed the rain drenched crowd for over a half hour with their brand of crushing hardcore and punk influenced grindcore.

If you have not yet taken the time to look into the insanely talented group of bands coming out of today's Brazilian scene, do yourself a favor and check out D.E.R., Test, NYAB as well as other wonderful bands like Academic Worms, Expurgo, Hutt, Subcut... These are all bands that are changing the game of fast music in 2014. Thanks for reading! Grind is protest.

 I have a been a huge fan of D.E.R. for a while now, and I was very happy to have our bands play together at OEF Mexico last year! Can you give me a history of D.E.R. When did the band form? Any lineup changes? What bands influenced you to start a grindcore band? How would you describe your sound?

Yeah, thanks man. Was realy good to play there in mexico, and we where happy to see you guys playing too.

So, We started in 1998, we where (and still are) heavily influenced by early brazilian punk bands from the 1980's.  we used to hang out with some punk gangs to drink beer and cheap wine and to see other punk bands from são paulo, later we wanted to start a band as well, but we didnt know how to play anything, we learned together to start the band. in the next years we started to understand more about music, and began to listen more hardcore, fastcore and grindcore, and naturally we began to play faster. 

We started to understand the politics inside punk rock as well and that's why we changed the line up sometimes, political divergences. With two members out of the band, at this time, the line up was only me, Thiago and Renato (guitar). Latter on Feliz join us playing bass and in 2002 Barata started to play drumm for the band. When Barata joined us was when we became a grindcore band. We never saw him playing but he lived in our neighborhood, that's why we invited him. In the first pratice with Barata we realized we could play faster and we mixed the anger and urgency of the 80's brazilian punk bands with the grindcore bands that we liked, like Napalm Death, ROT, Parental Advisory, Assuck, No Violence, Larm, Infest... The last change in the line up was in 2009, when Maurício replaced (this time not for political divergences) Feliz on bass. Maurício played bass for other bands like La Revancha and I Shot Cyrus, and was a perfect mix for us.Today I think we have a particular way to play grindcore. Sometimes we want to sound a little more death metal but we're not that good on our instruments and too punk rock for it hahahaha

Barata is the only one who always says for us to stay only in grindcore. I think we should kick him out of the band hahahahaThis mixture ends up in a sound like old Napalm Death with the urgency of punk rock. I think interesting, in a world of a lot of triggers and polished sound, technical musicians and hundreds of cymbals, we sound very simple and oldschool.

What makes Brazilian grindcore so unique in your opinion? What are some of your favorite bands, past and present?

I think it's the urgency and our political influences. The grindcore in Brazil always been much more close to punk/anarchopunk and the bands keeped this raw punk thing and add other elements from death metal. My favorite bands from the past are ROT, Parental Advisory, Brigada do Ódio, Plague Rages, Subcut, Desecration, No Sense, Subtera, Are You God?, No Violence, Abuso Sonoro... From the present, we have a lot of new bands like Obitto, TEST, NOIA, Lepra, Narayama, Baixo Calão and others that are playing for some years already like Facada, Desalmado, Expurgo, Social Chaos, Meant to Suffer and Hutt.

Can you tell me what albums from Brazilian bands have influenced you to want to make music?

Many albums but few grindcore albums hahahah. Ratos de Porão is a very important band to us. We listened to Cruscificados pelo Sistema and Descanse em Paz and we wanted to sound like this records. Sepultura's Bestial Devastation, Arase and Chaos AD, Sarfocago's INRI, etc...

Racionais MC's is a hip hop band from São Paulo that we consider a liberation on the politic field. This group is responsible for educate a lot of people from the suburbs. We came from the same neighborhood as they are and we are heavily influenced by them

 I have done a few interviews already, and I see a trend in everyone's answers mentioning how the political climate in Brazil has really influenced them to want to start a grindcore band. Can you tell me about how things are where you are from, and how does it affect you personally and how does it influence the song writing in the band.

Grindcore for us was something that comes out naturally, we knew how crushing the life is and grindcore was the style that fits us. I remember the feel when I started to do guttural vocals and the lyrics passing by my mind and then from a suffocant feeling I start to fell more relieved.

The band started in on of the poorest and violent neighborhood of são paulo, in the begining we only have contact with punk gangs but we thought that was not very smart and could not feed what we fell at the time

Tell me about the city where D.E.R. is from..Is there a huge scene right now? What are your local show like?

We are from São Paulo, capital of the state of... São Paulo hahaha. Our scene is not that big, we have small gigs at small bars and clubs almost every weekend. Sometimes one of two gigs during the week. In the past the gigs during the week was always empty but nowadays the people are going and thats a real good thing. It's hard to have a gig with only grindcore bands, we mix other styles and the result is a line up very interesting. 

Do you feel there are any Brazilian grind bands that were overlooked by fans of extreme music in Europe or North America?

Yeah, for sure. It's very rare to see somebody talking about a band from South America. Of course, there are exceptions but I think this is a cultural problem not only for music. We have this problem too, we only know very few bands from the other countries from south america. Bands from USA when go to europe they are treated different and vice-versa. But thats ok, we're alive since the beginning of the 80's when Brigada do Ódio did blastbeats before Napalm Death hahahah