Brazil’s much-praised Crypta bringing its powerful take on death metal to San Antonio

Since coming together in 2019 as an offshoot from long-running Brazilian thrash metal act Nervosa, death metal band Crypta has drawn critical praise for a pair of albums that pay homage to the genre’s roots while pushing it in intense new directions.

The all-female quartet has also earned respect from metal heavyweights such as Morbid Angel, who invited the group onto its previous U.S. tour, and Tobias Forge of Ghost, who praised Cypta as his favorite up-and-coming band.

Crypta will perform Saturday, Oct. 12, at San Antonio’s Vibes Event Center as part of a package tour that also includes headliners Hatebreed along with Carcass and Harm’s Way.

We caught up with Crypta bassist-vocalist Fernanda Lira on the phone after a soundcheck in New Jersey to talk about the band’s lyrical and musical approach, its evolution and the challenges that remain for women musicians in extreme metal.

Crypta is a big stylistic shift from Nervosa. Had you been wanting to take that musical step for quite some time?

You were right when you say it’s two completely different worlds. I have to agree with that, and it was on purpose. We actually planned on that, because Crypta was actually supposed to be a side project from when we were still in Nervosa — me and [drummer] Luana [Dametto] — and we just wanted to do something different. We just wanted to have a different creative outlet, and we just didn’t want to play the same genre we were playing in Nervosa, which was thrash metal. We just wanted to shift to something else. Then, thrash and death metal are my two favorite metal genres, and also Luana has always been a death metal drummer, so it was some sort of obvious choice for us, I guess. She played death metal already. I loved death metal already. So I think this was the way to go.

But from the beginning, we intended the band to be more extreme, and overall just different from what we were doing. Then, as we left Nervosa, then we really shaped Crypta into what we wanted it to be. Although it changed a lot from what we initially had planned for Crypta. We wanted to play old school death metal and stuff like that, based on my main influences, which are old-school death metal from Florida, and Luana, who loves old-school death metal from Sweden and stuff like that, but it has evolved from that. I think there’s even some modern elements here and there. It’s more atmospheric. There’s way more melody than what we planned initially, but yeah, still it’s way more extreme than what we were doing there in Nervosa.

Lyrically, the dominant subjects in death metal as a genre tend to be blood, gore and humanity’s propensity for violence. On the other hand, Crypta’s are more focused on personal issues: battling depression and overcoming adversity, for example. Can you talk a little bit about the lyric writing process and if there was ever any debate how to approach lyrics for the new band?

Actually, to me, it was the most challenging part of this whole transition between both bands. Because when it came to songwriting or writing riffs and everything, that was way easier. But when it came to the lyrics, I was exactly thinking like, “OK, I don’t think I have any repertoire to write about demons, guts and gory stuff,” and I don’t judge, because most of my favorite bands talk about that, but it’s just like, I wouldn’t be able to write about that. I was like, “OK, so what kind of dark stuff that still matches death metal could I be talking about?” And then, at the time, I was going through some hardships, and that was inspirational to me.

So, I was like, “OK. I think I can still approach the darkness and gloomy vibes that death metal kind of requires from lyrics, but still talking about personal stuff, and also stuff that lots of people could maybe feel represented by — or that people could relate to in a way.” So that was the path I chose. I was, instead of exploring darkness in a way that people are usually doing in death metal — just because I can’t do it — I just went for what I felt more comfortable about, which is the psyche, the mind and the dark aspects of our existence — more philosophical stuff like that. And also, in the beginning, on our first record, Echoes of the Soul, you can still see some protest songs, like more political songs.

Those protest songs were just reminiscent from Nervosa times. … Because I was writing protest songs for a decade, it was very natural — organic to me — and I couldn’t help but still having a couple of them in our first record, but then on our second album, Shades of Sorrow , I think that when I reached what I wanted. That’s when I felt more comfortable with what I was creating. I was like, “OK, so this is what I’ve been wanting to do.”

Shades of Sorrow also is big musical jump from Echoes of the Soul . It feels more complex, more intense and the melodies are more distinct. How did that evolve?

I think there’s two main factors. The first thing is I think we evolved naturally as a band. On the first album, we were still trying to understand what we were as a band, musically speaking. We knew we wanted to sound aggressive and death metal, but still, we were still experimenting, I think. But in Shades of Sorrow, we knew already what we wanted, what we felt, what felt more exciting playing — and also what the fans liked the most. Also, the other factor is that on the first album, it was mainly written by me and our ex-guitarist, Sonia Anubis. Now she plays in Cobra Spell, and we wrote most of the melodies together. She really liked the more of a melodic side of death metal, which is fine.

I think we did a great job in Echos of the Soul, but then when Sonia left the band, it was me and [guitarist] Tainá [Bergamaschi], who mainly wrote the new music. And Tainá, she still likes her melodies, but they’re more — I don’t want to say they’re not as happy as the first album, but they’re more … they’re darker. Let’s put it this way. It’s darker melodies, and so, yeah, I think writing the album with Tainá and not with Sonia, played a big part on changing the sound.

Brazil has long been a hotbed for heavy and extreme music going back to the days of Ratos de Porão and Sepultura. Did being in that environment embolden you to want to play heavy and extreme music from a young age?

First of all, I agree with you that maybe Brazilian bands have that rawness to them because of the kind of life we have in Brazil and Latin America as a whole, which is really not easy. I think it kind of reflects on the music we play. For us, I don’t think it’s something that is thought, though. We don’t really think about sounding in this particularly aggressive way, raw, or whatever, but then I started hearing people giving me this kind of feedback every time since Nervosa.

“You guys have this Brazilian thing to your metal.”

And I’m like, “Really? What is this Brazilian thing?”

And then, with time, over time, I started getting it, getting what people were trying to say, and I think it definitely relates to the kind of life we live as part of a Brazilian society. It’s truly hard making a living. It’s truly hard surviving there. It’s really hard to thrive economically, socially there, so I think we all, at some point, used our music as our dearest way of expressing ourselves, and just unburdening about all the struggles we have to face daily. So I think that adds a lot to this typical rawness, aggression that Brazilian metal has.

Because you’ve played in a couple of bands that are comprised of all women members, was that difficult in Brazil? Is it difficult as you tour internationally? Has it been difficult to be accepted in the same way as bands with all male members?

The curious thing is that I’ve always played with women only. I came to this conclusion a while ago. I don’t have anything against you guys at all, but it just felt natural from the beginning that I played with girls, because there were a lot of guy bands out there. I was like, “Damn! I want to get some girls and play,” and it just always felt natural to me. Now I understand the reason behind it, and I actually raised it as a flag. I’m very proud of having an older band, because we go through very specific battles, being women in the metal scene, but on the beginning, it was nothing planned, actually.

It was very natural, but it was really tough on the beginning. It was really tough. It still is. Every woman, you know, that’s in a band or behind the scenes, whatever, is involved in tours, playing in bands or whatever, they’ll go through stuff you can’t even imagine. And I’m not only talking about dick pics, which we get a lot, and weird requests. “Could you post some videos playing barefoot?” (Laughs.) Yeah, yeah. That’s the lightest. That’s the lightest. You have no idea the kind of pictures we get on our DMs, but this is just one example. But we get, before we had our crew, we got people who want to teach us on how to use our amps, our own instruments.

Jesus Christ.

Yeah, yeah. Still, to this day, I get blocked from my own dressing room every tour. At least once a tour, that happens, because people think we’re groupies — and nothing against them — but these people can’t associate women with being in a band. So we get blocked every tour, and then we need a guy tour manager to come and say, “Hey, they’re in a band,” and then people will believe it. But in the beginning, it was way harder. … I always felt that whenever I was on stage. I had to prove people that we can do this too. But I think metal has been really welcoming, more and more welcoming to girl bands and accepting the fact that we’re here to stay. And yeah, I think the metal crowds are more and more open to seeing girls on stage, and that’s really cool, but yeah, in the beginning it was really, really tough.

$39.50-$45, 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12, Vibes Event Center, 1211 E. Houston St., (210) 255-3833, facebook.com/vibeseventcenter.

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