"I love being a poser!" Five minutes with Fernanda Lira of fast-rising Brazilian death metallers Crypta

Brazilian death metal quartet Crypta were already making serious waves in the global metal underground before Ghost mainman Tobias Forge singled them out as his favourite extreme metal band of the moment . Last year's ace Shades Of Sorrow album was released to critical acclaim, continuing their elevation as one of death metal's most promising younger names, while dates across Europe and South America have kept them busy in recent months. We sat down with the band's singer and bassist Fernanda Lira to talk extreme music, King Diamond and, er, Beyoncé tattoos.

You’ve said your dad is an even bigger metalhead than you are…

“I started listening to metal because of him! When I was six and seven, he would record me cassette tapes with my favourite picks from what he was listening to. There was Warlock, Kiss and Iron Maiden, but also Biohazard and Suicidal Tendencies. I’ve been listening to metal since I was six because of my dad – while listening to Hanson and the Spice Girls too.”

You have a tattoo of King Diamond on your leg. Was it hard explaining to the tattoo artist why you wanted to get a portrait of a man with upside-down crosses on his face?

“Ha ha ha! Not that time, because my tattoo artist at the time was a King Diamond fan. But, I have to explain it all the time, everywhere, to everyone, whenever I’m wearing shorts. They’re like, ‘Who is this?!’, in complete shock. They see [a tattoo of] Amy Winehouse on my other leg and then they get to King Diamond, like… ‘What the fuck?!’ When I actually have the chance to explain that he’s a singer and show people the way he sings, they’re like, ‘Oh my god, what kind of world is this?!’ It’s too much information.”

Do you have a Beyoncé tattoo?

“I do have one but it’s so bad! It’s so fucking bad that people don’t even recognise that it’s Beyoncé. It’s just her silhouette from the beginning of her show during the Lemonade tour. It’s very specific, her wearing a big hat, with no feet for some reason. Everyone thinks it’s Zorro. Ha ha! Or Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat. Everyone tries and guesses wrong. The only time it got recognised was at a Beyoncé concert.”

When you posted photos of you at a Beyoncé show on Instagram, were you surprised by how much that blew up?

“I was surprised because a lot of people already knew I was a Beyoncé fan. I’d posted about it before that event, and I got this tattoo in 2016 or ’17. I had no idea why people were so upset that time. Many people were very happy to see a metalhead admitting they listen to pop music, but I got a lot of messages from people who thought it wasn’t a ‘metal’ thing to do.”

What did they say?

“They were saying I was a ‘poser’, basically, and I love that! I recently came to the conclusion that I love being called a poser. If being a poser is being free from all the typical metal stereotypes and rules, then I love being a poser! I love the metal identity, like the all-black clothes and everything, and the metal culture and community, but I don’t love it when it’s confining. I want to be free, and I want to encourage other people to be free as well.”

Didn’t fans start giving you Beyoncé stuff when you were on tour?

“Yes, which I love, so it worked! Ha ha ha! I’m kidding, but I have this little picture that someone photoshopped, which is Beyoncé standing onstage and me standing right next to her playing my bass. I put that where I work, in my office, so I can look at that every day and get inspired: ‘One day, that’s gonna happen!’ People are saying that the next Beyoncé album in this trilogy she’s doing [currently composed of 2022’s Renaissance and 2024’s Cowboy Carter ] is going to be a rock album, so I’ve been asking the universe, ‘Please, there has to be a feature going on!’”

You released the latest Crypta album, Shades Of Sorrow , last year. Have you started writing the next record yet?

“Not at all! I have the concept of the album – well, now you know it’s gonna be a concept album – pretty much ready in my mind. Lyric-wise, I know exactly what I wanna write about, and that’s gonna involve a lot of studying, so I have a very intense year ahead. We haven’t started writing music because we’re touring: by the end of this year, we’ll have played around 150 shows [in 2024]. So, yeah, the new album is far away, 2026.”

Shades Of Sorrow is out now via Napalm