Viper (band)

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viper
General information
origin São Paulo , Brazil
Genre (s) Power Metal , Speed ​​Metal , Heavy Metal , Progressive Metal , Neoclassical Metal , Hard Rock , Punk
founding 1985, 2004
resolution 1996
Current occupation
E-bass , now also vocals
Pit Passarell
Felipe Machado
Andre Matos
Guilherme Martin
Electric guitar
 Hugo Mariutti
former members
Drums
 Sergio Facci
Drums
 Cassio Audi
Electric guitar
 Yves Passarell
initially drums, later electric guitar
 Valdécio Santos
Drums
 Renato Graccia
singing
 Ricardo Bocci
Electric guitar (live)
 Marcelo Mello
Electric guitar (live)
 Rodrigo Alves

Viper is a Brazilian metal band from São Paulo , which was formed in 1985, disbanded in 1996 and has been active again since 2004. The group was also known at times in Europe under the name Viper Brazil .

history

The band was founded in 1985 by 16-year-old bassist Pit Passarell and guitarists Yves Passarell (Pit's brother) and Felipe Machado. A short time later, the singer Andre Matos and the drummer Cassio Audi joined them and completed the line-up. Matos, who was also around 16 years old, was also studying music at the university at the time. This was followed by a first demo called The Killera Sword , which was played several times on the radio. About Rock Brigade Records , which was operated by the magazine of the same name , the debut album Soldiers of Sunrise was released in July 1987 , which was produced by André Cagni . About 10,000 units of the album separated within a short time. Then the group played together with Motörhead . For appearances in 1987 and 1988 Rodrigo Alves came as guitarist for the cast, which he left again. On the second album Theater of Fate produced by Roy M. Rowland , which was released in 1989, Sérgio Facci could be heard as the new drummer. The album contains the song Moonlight , a metal version of Ludwig van Beethoven's moonlight sonata . The ballad Living for the Night from it was often played on the radio. On the following tours Guilherme Martin was represented as a drummer. Martin should in turn be replaced by Renato Graccia. In 1991, Theater of Fate also appeared in Japan , where it was ninth on the album charts and sold around 21,000 units. In 1992 both albums were also available in Germany on Massacre Records . After the release of Theater of Fate , the singer Matos left the band because he had different ideas about the musical development of the band and joined the group Angra . The bass player Pit Passarell then took over the vocals. In autumn 1992 the third album Evolution was released , which was recorded in the Horus Sound Studio in Hanover under the direction of Charlie Bauerfeind . The recordings were backing vocals from Sascha Paeth and Thomas Rettke of Heavens Gate contributed. The band also covered Queens We Will Rock You on the album . The song Rebel Maniac from the album was featured on the radio frequently that same year. In 1993 the band went on a tour through Europe, where they also played with Chroming Rose in Wuppertal , parallel to the release of the EP Vipera Sapiens . In Europe, the EP was named "Viper Brazil" because a German band already claimed the name Viper for themselves. The re-release of Soldiers of Sunrise and the re-release of Evolution were also released under this distinctive name. An April 18, 1993 recording from a club in Tokyo was released as Live Maniacs in Japan in 1994 . The band covers We Will Rock You again , as well as the Ramones song I Wanna Be Sedated and Tim Maias Não Quero Dinheiro . In 1994 the band played two concerts as the opening act on Metallica's Brazil tour at Parque Antartica Stadium in front of 20,000 people. The following year she played on the Monsters of Rock at Pacaembu Stadium . In 1995 the album Coma Rage was released via Roadrunner Records , which included a cover version of the song I Fought the Law by Sonny Curtis . The sound carrier was recorded in Los Angeles under the direction of Bill Metoyer . The group was played on the radio again and a music video for the title song was broadcast on MTV . In 1996 the album Tem pra todo Mundo was released , after which the group broke up. After Matos left Angra he was contacted by Pete Passarrel in order to win him over for a few appearances in 2000. However, these shows for the reunification were moderately successful, which is why a permanent reunion did not take place.

In 1999 the compilation Everybody Everybody was released. 2001 Yves Passarell appeared together in Matos' new band Shaman . In 2004 Viper played at Rock the Planet in São Paulo with Shaman, Kotipelto and Edguy and has been regularly active since then. On April 9, 2005, the band played a concert in Manifesto to mark the 20th anniversary of the band. Viper meanwhile consisted of the singer Ricardo Bocci, the guitarists Felipe Machado and Val Santos, the bassist Pit Passarell and the drummer Guilherme Martin. In 2005, the group recorded the demo Do It All Again , which includes new material and a newly recorded version of Knights of Destruction . In March 2006 the band went to the Estudio Ultra-Sônica in São Paulo to record a new studio album, which was released in June 2007 under the name All My Life . Andre Matos contributed the vocals for the song Love Is All , while Yves Passarel played the electric guitar in Violet . More appearances followed, for which Marcelo Mello came to the band as guitarist, as Val Santos had left the band two months after the release of All My Life to work as a producer. In June 2012 the band played a concert in Santo André to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Soldiers of Sunrise . In addition to Pit Passarell as singer and bassist, Matos also came back as a singer. Hugo Mariutti now played the guitar alongside Machado.

style

According to Matthias Herr's Heavy Metal Lexicon Vol. 4 , the band Helloween was probably influenced by the sound of the demo The Killera Sword . Soldiers of Sunrise offers partly quite fast Metal, which tries for melody and heaviness. The singing is melodious. Also Theater of Fate offer melodic speed metal. The vocals are high and passionate and the electric guitars are ecstatic . In addition, towards the end of the album, the band also made use of an acoustic guitar and a piano. Compared to its predecessors, the third album Evolution is much rougher. The singing and playing of the electric guitars are particularly striking. In the song The Spreading Soul you can hear string instruments and acoustic guitars. Vipera Sapiens offers "Speed ​​Metal with feeling and heart, power and melody of rare quality". David White from Allmusic wrote about Soldiers of Sunrise that it played Heavy Metal in the style of Iron Maiden . Theater of Fate offers a more mature songwriting and has been influenced by classical music . Matos' singing has also improved. He assigned the album to progressive and neoclassical metal . With Matos leaving, Evolution can now be assigned to Hard Rock, whereas Coma Rage offers raw punk rock. According to rockdetector.com , the band plays European-sounding speed metal. In Coma Rage , the band is increasingly processing influences from hardcore punk . At Tem pra todo Mundo, the band also uses non-genre instruments such as a violin , trombones , a saxophone , a cello and a trumpet . The album was first sung in Portuguese . In their Myspace biography, the band said they were influenced by bands like Iron Maiden for Soldiers of Sunrise . Until the recordings of Theater of Fate , the band had never heard of Helloween, Andre Matos stated in an interview with Dead Ripper from metalkings.com , so that an influence of this band was out of the question. Instead, the group was influenced by his studies of classical music as well as groups like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest . Pit Passarell was mainly responsible for the songwriting.

Andreas Schöwe from Metal Hammer described the band as the Brazilian Helloween. In an issue that appeared three years later, Schöwe ​​stated that she was turning more and more away from true metal and more towards punk. According to Machado, the band has changed completely with the departure of Matos and they have turned away from Power Metal in the style of Helloween. In addition, you no longer play songs from the first two albums live. From Evolution , the band loud Schöwe is the South American heirs of the Sex Pistols and The Clash become. According to Oliver Klemm from Metal Hammer , in his review of Soldiers of Sunrise , the group sounds like it was influenced by groups like Helloween before the arrival of Michael Kiske , Agent Steel and Iron Maiden. The singing reminds of Kai Hansen , especially in the higher registers . Uwe Schnädelbach from the same magazine found in his review of Theater of Fate that the band sounds atypical for a Brazilian group; rather the band could have come from Germany. The songs can be assigned to Speed ​​Metal and have a hymn-like character. The singing is comparable to that of Michael Kiske. In his review of Evolution , Schöwe ​​stated that the band on the album can no longer be compared with Helloween. Only the occasionally fast electric guitars and the singing, which sometimes reminds me of Kiske, would still coincide with Helloween. Otherwise rough Power Metal sounds would dominate. There is also punk-like shout singing in songs like Rebel Maniac and Dance of Madness . The album offers a mixture of "pure energy, tight roughness and simple melody". According to Schöwe, live maniacs in Japan offer an overview of the band's previous works. However, the sound quality is poor and the same as that of a punk release. According to Volker Raabe from Metal Hammer , Coma Rage offers a mixture of melodic metal and punk elements. The music can hardly be compared with that of Helloween or Blind Guardian . This development had already indicated evolution .

Soldiers of Sunrise was described by Christoph Kümmel in Break Out as "very rough and unpolished" and "roughly in line with Helloweens Walls of Jericho ".

According to the metal star reviewer Achim Karstens, the songwriting on Theater of Fate is old-fashioned due to its borrowings from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and Helloween, along with a touch of classical music. The production is just mediocre, only the skills of the musicians are okay.

Frank Trojan was impressed by Evolution at Rock Hard : “A ballad and nine speed metal hits adorn the album; the perfect implementation of the Queen hit We Will Rock You tops it all off . ”In an interview with Chris Glaub from Break Out , Felipe Machado spoke about the concept of evolution : The proportion of poor and homeless gets higher the bigger a city gets . This increases the crime rate. The government is not bothering about these problems, however, but is investing its money in more effective Warren instead of fighting AIDS , pollution and unemployment. The environment is also destroyed by chemicals, so that human evolution is seen as negative and is more of a step backwards.

Discography

as a viper
  • Projeto SP Metal (Demo, 1985, self-published)
  • The Killera Sword (Demo, 1985, self-published)
  • Soldiers of Sunrise (album, 1987, Rock Brigade Records )
  • Viper 1989 (demo, 1989, self-published)
  • Theater of Fate (album, 1989, Eldorado Records )
  • Evolution (album, 1992, Massacre Records )
  • Live - Maniacs in Japan (Live album, 1993, Massacre Records)
  • Vipera Sapiens (EP, 1993, Massacre Records)
  • Coma Rage (album, 1995, Roadrunner Records )
  • Tem pra todo Mundo (album, 1996, Castle Brasil )
  • Theater of Fate / Soldiers of Sunrise ( compilation , 1997, Paradoxx Music , re-released 2001 via Arise Records )
  • Everybody Everybody (Compilation, 1999, Eldorado Records)
  • Do It All Again (Demo, 2005, self-published)
  • 20 Years Living for the Night (DVD, 2005, Gabaju )
  • All My Life (album, 2007, Eldorado Records)
  • Live at Manifesto - Official Fanclub DVD (Demo, 2008, self-release)
as Viper Brazil
  • Soldiers of Sunrise (album re-release, 1992, Massacre Records)
  • Evolution (album, 1992, Massacre Records)
  • Vipera Sapiens (EP, 1993, Massacre Records)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Biography. (No longer available online.) Rockdetector.com, archived from the original on October 21, 2014 ; accessed on October 12, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rockdetector.com
  2. ↑ a b c d Dead Ripper: SHAMAN. metalkings.com, accessed October 12, 2014 .
  3. ↑ a b David White: Viper. Allmusic , accessed October 10, 2014 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e Andreas Schöwe: Viper . Brazilian pumpkin heads. In: Metal Hammer . July 1992, p. 141 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i About VIPER. Myspace , archived from the original on March 14, 2009 ; accessed on October 12, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Andreas Schöwe: Chroming Rose Viper Brazil . Wuppertal. In: Metal Hammer . August 1993, p. 136 .
  7. ↑ a b Matthias Herr: Matthias Herr's Heavy Metal Lexicon Vol. 4 . Verlag Matthias Herr, 1994, p. 191 f .
  8. ↑ Viper (16) - Soldiers Of Sunrise. Discogs , accessed October 12, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Viper (16) - Evolution. Discogs, accessed October 12, 2014 .
  10. ↑ VIPER: More Video Footage Of Santo André Reunion Concert. Blabbermouth.net , accessed October 12, 2014 .
  11. ↑ Andreas Schöwe: On the point (t) . Viper. In: Metal Hammer . June 1995, p. 121 .
  12. ↑ Oliver Klemm: Viper . Soldiers of Sunrise. In: Metal Hammer . December 1987, p. 52 .
  13. ^ Uwe Schnädelbach: Viper . Theater of Fate. In: Metal Hammer . May 1992, p. 65 .
  14. ^ Andreas Schöwe: Viper Brazil . Evolution. In: Metal Hammer . December 1992, p. 57 .
  15. ↑ Andreas Schöwe: Viper . Live maniacs in Japan. In: Metal Hammer . February 1995, p. 59 .
  16. ↑ Volker Raabe: Viper . Coma rage. In: Metal Hammer . April 1995, p. 57 .
  17. ↑ Christoph Kümmel: Viper . Soldiers of Sunrise. In: Break Out . September 1992, p. 37 .
  18. ↑ Achim Karstens: Viper . Theater of Fate. In: Metal Star . May 1992, p. 73 .
  19. ^ Frank Trojan: Viper Brazil . Get out of the slums! In: Rock Hard . No. 73 , June 1993, Smalltalk, pp. 116 .
  20. ↑ Chris Glaub: Viper . Ready for the World Cup? In: Break Out . June / July, 1993, p. 18 .