WHIPSTRIKeR
Brazil’s metal militant finds war on his doorstep
you don’t even need to listen to Whipstriker’s new album, Merciless Artillery, to know that it’ll scratch that old-school itch; the artwork alone screams of a world where war reigns eternally and the radio plays Venom, Motörhead and (early) Bathory on a loop. Forever.
“My musical vision has never changed,” says Whipstriker mastermind Victor Vasconcellos. “I love the 80s and 70s sound. There are no rules, I just hate it when bands mix ‘pure’ metal with other styles, like rap. All the bands I like from the 80s are shit nowadays, especially the thrash bands. In the 90s they tried to include new influences in their sounds and they became shit!”
One of numerous projects that Victor has pursued over the years (others include Atomic Roar, Kuld and Virgin’s Vomit), Whipstriker took early inspiration from the experience of touring as a member of Joel Grind’s Toxic Holocaust and he decided to emulate that band’s singularity of vision and execution with a line-blurring blackened punk/metal crusade of his own. On the 29th Whipstriker release in less than a decade, Victor has taken a more focused metallic approach.
“We have fewer punk influences this time,” Victor notes. “It has a more speed/thrash vibe. You know that classic Motörhead/Warfare beat? We used to do it a lot; now we are doing it less. I’ve been listening to a lot of albums that I grew up with, like Endless Pain, Show No Mercy and Seven Churches… but we never forget Venom! There is a song called Mantas’ Black Mass. Listen to it and draw your own conclusions.”
As much as their music sounds like a celebration of underground metal’s filthy origins, Whipstriker’s dark edge comes as much from grim reality as from nostalgia. Living in urban Brazil is clearly no picnic, and the wars that erupt in Victor’s songs are brutal echoes of the real thing. Now that’s fucking metal.
“There is a civil war in Rio de Janeiro,” he says. “I see innocent people dying and tanks parading every day. I see children holding big guns and killing for fun. I see cops raping people. So yeah, the new album is about war… except for the song for Mantas!”