Crypta: Rising From The Ashes
Newly formed death metal juggernauts CRYPTA have very recently torn their way into the peripherals of riff-thirsty maniacs the world over with the release of their tremendous debut album Echoes Of The Soul. The project has brought together some of the sickest minds from names such as NERVOSA, BURNING WITCHES and HAGBARD to create a festering and frightening all-female beast. We spoke to guitarist Tainá Bergamaschi about CRYPTA’s sound, the daunting task of writing and recording such a furious and technical album in the times of COVID-19 and how they feel about squaring up to the largely male-dominated world of death metal, grabbing it by the lapels and demanding it take notice.
“I think [attitudes have] changed a lot.” Says Tainá, “Nowadays you find many people criticizing metal bands that contain women for comments on the internet, coming from fake profiles, this number is much higher than people who disrespect you personally. We are increasingly conquering a larger space. No matter how hard it is, we’re all the same and we’re here to make music and enjoy it together, no matter what the genre. To be quite honest, there aren’t so many all-female bands playing at festivals out there in death metal and that still, unfortunately in a way, gets a lot of public attention.”
“But, more importantly to me, I believe we managed to do something different on our first album. First of all, [our sound is] definitely death metal. I know many are considering black metal for our first single and yes, we have some riffs that have a bit of the genre. But our music is diverse I think, we have different influences from American old school death metal to Swedish or Polish death metal. We have songs that are more melodic, others more extreme, and even a bit of technical, which is more my thing.”
“We worked a lot on the influence of each member of the band and that brought a more characteristic sound, original perhaps? Still within the genre, we have different tastes, Sonia [Anubis, Guitars] brings most of the most melodic and epic riffs, Luana [Dametto, Drums] and Fernanda [Lira, Vocals/Bass] have the most raw vibe and old school death metal influence. A funny fact that many of these black metal riffs is Fernanda, but she doesn’t listen to black metal! I also have a melodic side, but I end up taking it to a more technical side.”
CRYPTA is an earth-straddling project, with its members stretched from Brazil to as far afield as the Netherlands. While most of us will be left scratching our heads and wondering how such a vastly spaced project came about, Tainá dains to enlighten us.
“First, back in May 2019, Luana and Fernanda had the idea of a new death metal project. Both were still in NERVOSA. They immediately thought of inviting Sonia as the guitarist of the project, the three already knew each other through a festival where their bands played together. When Sonia agreed to be a part of the band and they formed the trio, they started writing their first songs. At the same time, they started looking for a second guitarist. They had some difficulty finding someone who was interested in the band’s proposal, which was the touring routine for example. When they started talking about the project on social media, but without saying who the members were, I contacted Fernanda, asking if they had a guitarist. This happened in April 2020. Luckily for me, they were still looking for the second guitarist for the new project. So, after some tests we formed the quartet, and announced CRYPTA in May 2020.”
During this time, the world descended into madness. We were beset by the new plague of COVID-19, something which affected almost every facet of the day-to-day lives of the global population. This would undoubtedly affect a collaborative process such as writing and producing an album, but still the women of CRYPTA soldiered on. Tainá describes how the process played out and how the pandemic affected them.
“Since the band started, back in 2019, we only met in person in January 2021 for the recording of the album! We worked on the entire composition of the album from a distance and also did the pre-production. We all wrote the songs equally. Of course, once in a while inspiration comes so easily that one of us ends up writing a complete song by themselves, hard to avoid it! But in the pre-production of the album for example, we took track by track and made new riffs and structures together. When we got to the studio we had everything ready to sit down and record, very few things changed in that period. I believe that if it weren’t for the pandemic, we would be more or less like this, since even me, Luana and Fernanda, who live in Brazil, live very far from each other. A big difference would be that we would be able to work and record the first album faster!”
Not long after the formation the band was snapped up by Napalm Records and built up quite a substantial following before they’d even released a single, but how did they respond to the weight of all this interest?
“It helped us a lot, because it’s not easy to start a band from scratch with the proposal it has. I’m also talking about fan support, not just the label. What happens is that the girls, Fernanda, Luana and Sonia, already had a large number of people who accompanied them in their previous work, and so they already knew the new band, CRYPTA. We felt a certain pressure but for things that were not in our control. It was difficult to bring Sonia to Brazil in the middle of a pandemic. But the label helped us a lot on that, and we held back as long as we could, so we were able to release our songs safely.
In case you haven’t heard it yet, there is some absolutely explosive material on Echoes Of The Soul. It stands to reason then, that the band would hold these tracks in high esteem themselves as well, Tainá clearly does and she had this to say in closing, when looking back at Echoes and looking forward to a time when the world is back to its familiar, gig-laden self.
“Oh definitely, The ones I’m most looking forward to playing live are Death Arcana, Dark Night of the Soul, Possessed, Kali, Under The Black Wings and Blood Stained Heritage. Oh, wait, almost all of them! At the moment we’re confirmed for Wacken Open Air and an European tour with DEICIDE and KRISIUN, both in 2022. We are negotiating more tours at the moment. For now we’re working a lot in the releases but, yes, we started to write some new songs already! When inspiration comes, we can’t wait too long!”
Echoes Of The Soul is out now via Napalm Records.
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