© : Estevam Romera
In the extreme metal microcosm, all-female bands aren’t very common. One of these rare species are the young Brazilian girls from Crypta with whom we already made an interview two years ago when their very first album “Echoes of the Soul” came out. Now, with the release of their second opus “Shades of Sorrow”, we took the opportunity to chat with Luana Dametto, the drummer of this four-piece death metal formation.
Dean : Hi Luana, how is your tour going on so far? Luana Dametto: It goes on well! We didn't play many shows yet in the second part of our European tour, but it felt very good for the gigs we have played so far. We got more people at the shows than we have expected for this headlining tour.
You are talking about the last shows in Spain I suppose? Yeah, we’ve been to Spain and before in Italy and I think in Germany and Austria too.
Will you play some more shows in the near future? Oh no, I’m going back home actually, I’m just having some free time here in Europe.
Last year in July I saw you performing in Trier, Germany, where I did an interview with Hiraes and it was a hell of a heat! Now I’ve seen on TV that there was a heat wave in Spain where you performed. Do you have some special tricks to cope with the heat? Well I like the heat quite a lot! From all the band members it’s actually me who likes it the most. In Brazil it’s warm during the summer but we also have pretty harsh winters, especially where I live in the south close to Uruguay and Argentina. There’s even some snow in some cities! But I prefer the heat and I even don’t mind playing at 45°C without a fan! I know that’s pretty rare, most people feel like suffocating and melting, but I really enjoy!
So even as a very active drummer you really like the heat? Yeah!
You should put some pyro on stage then ! I would appreciate this! (laughs)
Before we come to your new album, let’s talk about your band. You have founded it four years ago with Fernanda as a side project from Nervosa. What were your main reasons to focus now just on the Crypta project and by this change the genre? Yes, indeed we started Crypta as a side project, we were still Nervosa as we began with it. We thought Crypta would be a band to play in our free time when we were at home and the idea was to go on with both bands. I have always been more into death metal than in any other music genre, even way more into death metal than into thrash metal. I don’t even listen to thrash metal although I was playing in such a band! So we decided to go into that death metal direction which made me feel very comfortable and in the end of the day things didn’t go very right at Nervosa so we decided to leave the band. We then decided to fully concentrate on Crypta and to make it our main band.
So you feel more at home with Crypta than with a thrash metal band like Nervosa? Oh yeah, absolutely!
Nevertheless there are some thrash and also black metal parts in your songs. How would you describe your writing style to our readers? I think we all enjoy black metal and I’m very much into it as well. We are writing riffs that are black metal orientated. I would describe Crypta as a “regular” death metal band as I don’t think that we really bring something new. I sometimes read online comments like “but they’re not doing something new, they don’t sound like anything I’ve not already heard before”. I then think that it was never supposed to be something new. The idea was always to play death metal that sounds like the bands we like. So let’s describe our music as very good cliché death metal. We’re happy with that. We have songs for people that like melodies and we also have songs that kill any melody, that are just blast beats and fast riffing. And for some other songs we add an important part of black metal.
Two years ago, when I did my first interview with Crypta, Sonia told me that your first album was written before Tainá joined the band. So as Jéssica replaced Sonia, I suppose that the new album “Shades of Sorrow” was written by two new guitar players. Did this bring some musical changes? Well I don’t think so as Jéssica was unfortunately not able to write something for this album. When she joined the band we already had the entire album written. So it was just me, Fernanda and Tainá writing the songs. Hopefully for the next album we’re gonna have Jéssica’s input too. We’ll see what’s going to happen.
The first album cover was designed by the well known Wes Benscoter. Did he also do the new one? No he didn’t. It was an artist from Mexico called Raúl Campos. The funny thing about this is that I’ve found this guy randomly on Instagram. I was searching for artists with an interesting style and so I was asking him if he’d like to work for us. He had never worked or designed a cover for a band before. He’s even not into metal I think. I had to explain him who we are. But it was fun to work with someone like that!
Indeed, that sounds interesting! What’s the symbolism of the cover with a covered figure sitting on a chair surrounded by candles and swords?
The album is about the process of pain that everybody has to go through in life. In fact it’s about all sorts of pain like depression, anxiety or sadness. We wanted to represent a person going through all this pain. It’s not about physical pain, but mental health. We decided to cover the person in fabric to say that it could be anyone behind this, that’s the message. It could be a man or a woman. There are some loose ropes around the neck and arms which means that this person could simply stand up and go away, but he’s not. Nevertheless, reading the lyrics, everyone in free to imagine whatever he or she wants. It’s very symbolic and somehow surreal.
This strong image was taken over in the video of the song “Lord of Ruins” where we can see the band members on the chair at the end of the video. What’s the meaning of this? At the beginning of the video, the person is tortured and as we show up ourselves at the end of it, it’s about inflicting pain and going through pain. A metaphor for the process of pain I was talking about. It could be anyone.
The new album starts with some atmospheric piano lines and a song like “Lullaby for the Forsaken” is also full of atmosphere at the beginning. Was it your goal to put the listener into a certain mood? Yeah I would say so. The intro and the outro have got the same melody, they’re just played differently, in a more peaceful way at the end, like we’re all done with that.
Besides an intro, there’s also an interlude and an outro (as you said) whereas the first album just had an intro. Nowadays more and more bands are adding short tracks to their albums. I was wondering if this has something to do with the way streaming and download platforms pay their artists? It would make sense but it’s not the case for us. We wanted to make a clear beginning and a clear end on this album. We thought of putting something in the middle in order to split it into two parts and by this not have something too massive and tiring. It’s a long album so it lets you breath a little bit in the middle. These small tracks can also be used on stage in order to put two songs together without stopping.
Let’s finish this interview with some personal questions. You did graphic design studies. So wouldn’t it be tempting for you to design the next album cover? I think I’m not that good to do a cover art though I wish I was! I worked as a graphic designer before I was in Nervosa. Now I’m doing layouts for our merch, I’m working on the website, designing our flyers and all this visual stuff. But I prefer other people do the cover art.
Do you have other interests in life except music? I do! I’m collecting antiques, nothing special, just as a hobby. I like to watch movies and I could think of many other things. And I like to discover new death metal bands.
If you like antiques, you should watch out for Mr. Lordi’s online shop called “weird antiques”! Definitively, that sounds super cool! I didn’t know about it yet.
Although you’re only 26 years of age or so, you’re already playing since ten years in a metal band. How did you come into this so early? Well I live in a small city and I never had friends to go out or with the same interests, I was like some kind of nerdy metalhead at home. So as I didn’t have much to do I decided to get a hobby. I heard of a person that played drums and so I’ve decided to buy a drum set and step by step it became more and more serious. So it was a pretty random thing!
And due to this random thing you’ve been touring around the world now and you have already played at big festivals like the Wacken Open Air. What are your best memories? That’s a difficult one! I would say that my best memory is Rock in Rio with Nervosa. It’s a huge thing to play this festival in Brazil and we played on the second biggest stage with a livestream that my friends and family could watch. It was just a very special moment for me!
Let’s close this interview with your plans for the future! Well, with the band it’s just to tour more and more. And hopefully we can evolve with Crypta, you know, get a little bit bigger and more comfortable. This is everyone's dream, I think, I hope it will happen. Like every band we try to release new albums that are better as the previous ones. And personally, well… I don't know. I am always up for new projects, be a session drummer if I have time, or find new people to play with.
Thanks Luana for your time and enjoy your vacation! Thank you!
© : Dean G