Crypta: Aftermath And Closure

Brazilian death metal masters CRYPTA have just released their second album Shades Of Sorrow and it balances the band’s brutal heaviness with melody and atmospheric interludes with style. Shades Of Sorrow is a deeply personal one for bassist/vocalist Fernanda Lira and we caught up with her on the day it was released to hear all about the album and its creation.

As we speak on the actual release day of Shades Of Sorrow, we kick off by asking how CRYPTA will be celebrating this momentous occasion and Fernanda tells us honestly. “That’s a good question, because I dove down so deeply on promoting this album with all the ideas and everything that I actually planned on spending my day working on the ideas for promoting! I actually thank you for that, because I might think of something to do later on just to celebrate such a special album!”

Fernanda continues in enthusing about how excited she is to have the album out and ready to be devoured by the CRYPTA faithful. “I’m very happy and very excited with Shades Of Sorrow. I love everything that my band will always ever create. This album is a very special one to me and I honestly love all the songs. I’m so proud of the album, the lyrics and the concept of the album as they have such a personal meaning to me.” 

Fernanda goes into explain how this album has reenergised the band and how much they are looking forward to playing the songs from Shades Of Sorrow in a live setting. “We love the album so much. We can really jam and headbang to our own albums! It’s really refreshing to us. I honestly cannot wait to play these songs live. I’ve been practising them, and I’m like ‘oh my God, when I play this part live, I’m gonna go nuts!’. I honestly can’t wait, and that’s a very good feeling and we’re all feeling this in the band, so its definitely reenergizing to be releasing such a dear album to us.” 

The themes within and the the overall notion of Shades Of Sorrow play an important part in the impact of the album and Fernanda tells us passionately all about it. “Shades Of Sorrow was supposed to be a concept album, but we didn’t have the time to make it the way I wanted to, connecting one song to another musically, the little intros I wanted and stuff like that, so it ended up being a semi concept album, because there’s still a thing that permeates the whole album, and it’s present in pretty much every song.” 

She goes on to explain the meaning of the album in depth. “Shades Of Sorrow is an album that depicts all the different feelings we experience when we’re going through tough times. It’s an album that talks about a journey through pain, and everything we feel when we’re travelling through pain, and that’s why it’s called Shades Of Sorrow. I think that’s a theme that most of us can relate to, because we’ve all struggled in life, and we all felt those emotions.” 

Fernanda continues to discuss the all too relatable aspects of Shades Of Sorrow and how that sharing has been nothing but a positive thing in the end. “I think it can be a very relatable album when it comes to the thing, but it’s also a very personal album to me, it’s nearly autobiographical. I was going through some dark times a couple of years ago and the lyrics were the cathartic way I found to transmute that cycle of pain I was going through.” 

Shades Of Sorrow is obviously a very heavy album but also has lots of beautiful instrumental flourishes though it. Fernanda tells us about both of these elements and how they importantly compliment each other throughout the album. “I think actually one of the main characteristics, musically speaking, is this blend of aggressiveness with emotional melodies and everything. That’s an essence that we had already in Echoes Of The Soul but I think we’ve developed a little bit more on Shades Of Sorrow and we all knew the concept of the album when when we started writing the music, so I think we easily connected to this feeling of pain and sorrow and I think it translated naturally very organically into the songs.” 

One track on Shades Of Sorrow that stands out is The Outsider which is musically brutal but the lyrics are very personal and vulnerable. Fernanda explains how important that song was to put on the album. “That is my favourite track in the album. It truly means a lot to me because that is my favourite song music wise. It’s so heavy but emotional at the same time. and I think that represents CRYPTA a lot. The lyrics are my favourite, and they are extremely personal.” 

The talk then turns to the pressure of CRYPTA following up their debut album Echoes Of The Soul with Shades Of Sorrow, something that Fernanda tells us she didn’t feel as much this time around. “I think actually people think that with the new album, there’s more pressure than with the first one because we needed to top up the previous album, but with Shades Of Sorrow, I had no pressure at all. To me, the most pressure I felt was with Echoes Of The Soul because it came after a very important and dramatic transition in my career when I left NERVOSA, and so many people were like ‘what is she going to do? How is it going to sound?’ So I knew there were there was a lot of expectations and pressure when writing that album, but with Shades Of Sorrow, I knew from all the feedback from that we had a fanbase already and we had captivated people. It was way smoother for me personally.”

We end the interview with Fernanda as she enthusiastically looks forward to CRYPTA‘s forthcoming show in Brazil supporting GHOST, after frontman Tobias Forge showered praise on the band in a recent interview, something that meant a lot to Fernanda. “That’s definitely going to be one of the highlights of this year, GHOST are huge, and to have him showing some love to the band, this really means a lot. He knows the band, but he actually enjoys the band and mentioning us, this truly means a lot to me!”

Shades Of Sorrow is out now via Napalm Records.

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