RATOS DE PORÃO

with special guests: The Varukers, Disorder, Disassociate (USA), The Backstreet Abortions

Presented by: Power of Intent Promotions

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0	LONDON: 229 Venue 1
P	Sunday 10th September, 2023
N	6:00pm

Event information

Power of Intent Promotions proudly presents The Legendary Brazilian Crossover Thrash band in two exclusive UK dates.

In October 2021, Ratos de Porão celebrated exactly 40 years as band during the recording of a new album, their first since 2014. During these 7 years, Brazil went through a process of political and social degradation like it hadn’t experience in decades.

If, on one hand, the country has never been able to really solve its structural problems, recent years have brought back hunger, inflation, threats of military coups and, if this wasn’t enough, a pandemic.

The result was “Necropolítica”, a conceptual work inspired by the Bolsonaro era and the rise of the new Brazilian far-right. And, musically, the best possible fit was to also revisit their crossover-thrash period of the late 80’s, an era equally marked by crisis and disappointment.

In over 40 years, Ratos de Porão were able to keep their essence intact during several phases. In the 80’s alone, the band went through the straight-forward American influenced hardcore heard in the “SUB” compilation (1983), the Nordic via-São Paulo D-Beat of Crucificados Pelo Sistema (1984) and the gloomy metalpunk of “Descanse em Paz” (1986) until reaching the formula that arguably defined the band’s identity more than any other.

We’re talking about their crossover-thrash trilogy of “Cada Dia Mais Sujo e Agressivo” (1987), “Brasil”(1989) e “Anarkophobia” (1990). This period saw the band at their most active and intense moment, when they developed a magic recipe mixing thrash metal precision, hardcore delivery and lyrics that documented Brazilian reality in a tone that alternated between satire and a journalistic level or realism.

The band never stopped evolving during the 90’s and beyond. They kept reinventing themselves and absorbing new influences in every new album, but the spirit of their crossover trilogy was always kept as the foundation on which new ideas were built.

So in this new album, the band suddenly revisits and updates this glorious era in what might be their most quintessentially Ratos de Porão album since “Anarkophobia”. And the moment couldn’t be more ripe.

In the late 80’s Brazil sold the dream of the return to democracy but delivered abject poverty, hyperinflation and brutal violence alongside an HIV epidemic.

The last decade, on the its turn saw history repeating itself as tragedy, when the relative prosperity of the 2000’s was replaced by a dystopic combo that brought back the hunger and inflation of the 1980’s alongside the authoritarian demagoguery of the military regime days and, as a bonus, the COVID pandemic.

As much as classic Brazilian punk was the child of dictatorial repression and Anglo-American hardcore was a result of the Reagan/Thatcher years, Bolsonaro’s Brazil fertilized the land for “Necropolítica” with the manure produced by sheep wearing (Brazil’s national football team’s) yellow jerseys.

The new release could just as well have been called “Brasil pt. 2”. Just like its 1989 counterpart, once again it’s a concept album about the country, an ode to the iniquities, the disillusion and the masses that, in bovine manner, collaborate with their own fate of underdevelopment while watching society decompose in front of their eyes.

Most bands that last this long are happy to live off their past glories or try to adapt to popular trends. Ratos de Porão never fell for this trap and always knew how to use their own legacy as material for new ideas. “Necropolítica” is, therefore, not an exercise in nostalgia, but a recycling of a spirit that suddenly made sense again.