Read Part I HERE.
Dead Rhetoric: Have you had good conversations with your fans regarding your lyrical topics and making people think or take action involving things like human inequalities or personal struggles?
Lira: Yeah, I think that’s a very good question. I love all of your questions so far, by the way. When I write my songs, my lyrics, that’s my main objective. I think society lacks in debating or thinking about stuff. We get used to all the shit that is going on and we don’t talk much about it or debate it- at least in Brazil, I don’t know how it is in other parts of the world. Society in a general way lacks of this debate. When I write a song I am expressing myself but I also want to make people think, they don’t have to agree with me – I love when people disagree because then we can debate about issues. I want people to read things, stop and think, have an opinion, talk about it with other people- or maybe absorb the thoughts and do something to change things. I don’t usually have this kind of conversation with the fans at shows, the fans want to know how things are on the road, they want to talk about metal, t-shirts and such because of the environment there. It’s rare that people talk about lyrics there- I think people do this more commenting on videos, commenting on posts, or asking questions on our social media sites. I’m happy enough to know by the comments on the internet that people are thinking about the issues I bring up and having an opinion. They are paying attention to the lyrics and that’s important enough.
Dead Rhetoric: While being a thrash act, I’ve noticed a number of crossover and death influences creep into the Nervosa platform. Is this diversity important and will it be something that continually develops record to record?
Lira: Oh yes. This for us is the most important thing. We have different influences individually because of our instruments – Pichu has her drums. The three of us agree on thrash metal, Pichu likes more traditional stuff like Iron Maiden, Prika likes a lot of death metal, grindcore and stuff like that. I listen to everything in heavy metal- from New Wave of British Heavy Metal to extreme death metal, gore, crust, Nightwish and Therion as well and then Deicide and folk metal. This is important because when we write our songs we are very influenced by all the stuff that we listen to. I think that’s cool because I’ve read some people speaking on the internet that the cool thing about Nervosa is that you can listen to many elements. There is nothing new in metal, but it’s not boring. I really like when bands mix one or two different styles, it makes the music more interesting. It happens with us naturally because of our different influences. In one song as you said you can have crossover, then pure thrash metal, totally death metal. On the last album we were really influenced by thrash and death the most.
Dead Rhetoric: Do you see a major different between the old-school thrash bands and the newer acts that have come about over the last 5-10 years?
Lira: Yes- that’s exactly the difference. Old school bands- they created the style so it’s that. The new bands because metal is saturated, what I think is cool about the new school of metal and new school of thrash metal itself is that people are trying to be inventive in making new ways of that genre. You see nowadays bands mixing thrash metal with groove metal, thrash and death, thrash and punk- this is pretty cool. We are all still doing thrash metal, but making something old school new by blending with other genres. To make things renew itself, that’s why it never dies.
Dead Rhetoric: You’ll be touring Europe with Destruction, Flotsam and Jetsam, and Enforcer in the fall- as Schmier has been a great supporter of the band, sharing an early promo video which helped gain more interest to sign with Napalm Records. How excited are you to be touring with these bands?
Lira: I don’t have any words to describe this- it’s like a total dream come true. Everyone has noticed that Destruction has had a huge influence on my way of writing songs, my way of singing and creating vocals. They are a huge influence to me and one of my favorite thrash metal bands. Schmier is a great guy and supporter- in life I will never be able to pay back all the support (he has given) for us. When I was kid listening to “Curse the Gods” and stuff like that, I always imagined it would be so cool to be touring with a band like that. Now I will be doing that in some months. Destruction is one of the top bands I wanted to tour with- and then Flotsam and Jetsam, when I was 17 Doomsday for the Deceiver was one of the albums I listened to the most. I’m so thankful to be doing this.
Dead Rhetoric: Early in your career, you experienced a lot of prejudice due to being an all-female thrash band. When do you think you started to overcome this? Did you just put more work into your musical skills and songwriting as a result to prove yourselves?
Lira: No, actually to be honest we never really pushed ourselves fighting all this prejudice. In the beginning I felt bad because no one knows me and they keep on saying bad stuff about us. The key we found to fight this is we didn’t care. It was only a few people, we preferred to focus on the people who actually supported us and loved metal, so we overcame that. A while ago this was something new, to have lots of female musicians and female bands. People tend to criticize what’s new, we proved that we were into metal and love to play metal. People noticed that, we don’t have a band out there to be just showing off, we are metalheads just like any other guy. We do things in an honest way, and everyone respects us now. We have the same metal blood running in our veins.