Dark Dimensions Fest, Brazil
Dark Dimensions Fest 2025
Carioca Clube Venue (São Paulo city/BR)
25/01/25
Review by Metalphycisist
On 25th of January 2025, São Paulo City commemorated 470 years, and that was the same day that the band Nervosa kicked off their 15-years Celebration Tour – Nervosa started to play in São Paulo’s underground circuit in 2010 and nowadays they tour all around the World. São Paulo, by the way, is a very prolific city for Heavy Bands. Brazil also has other Metal scenes in Curitiba and Rio de Janeiro, among other cities.
Before I begin to write my impressions on the Dark Dimensions Fest, I’d like to gauge the Heavy Metal tour circuit in Brazil – it’s not too long a regression, I promise. Brazil entered the Heavy Metal tour circuit after the successful gigs of Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake, AC/DC in the first version of Rock in Rio (1985) which became a mighty trademark in the Festivals calendar over the years, all around the world.
But it was in 1991, when the second Rock in Rio Festival version helped to, finally, set Brazil as a country to be part of the worldwide tour circuit for big bands. In 1991 Guns n Roses played during the recording of the “Use Your Illusions” album – they headlined two dates of the festival and played several songs from the new album, and I will never forget the opening track of their gig, ‘Pretty Tied Up’, which is a fantastic song that made the fans go out of their mind! The semblance of Axl Rose reflected the band’s overwhelming impact leading to them headlining two nights in front of 120,000 fans at the famous Brazilian Stadium – Maracanã. That was in this same festival that Megadeth, Judas Priest, Billy Idol, Faith no More and Queensryche played for sold out audience. Until today Rock in Rio is a strong trademark that produced several RiR versions in Brazil and Portugal. Meanwhile, a lot of showbiz corporations invested in another famous Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Festival, and brought to Brazil bands like Skid Row/Extreme; Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Red Hot Chilli Peppers. The likes of Iron Maiden and Metallica were always scheduling Brazil dates on their tours, too.
The 90’s was the decade that Brazil became the 4th or 5th most relevant country on Metal band tours (head-to-head with Japan). Brazil was, finally, on the top of the world! The Hard/Heavy Metal CDs had special sections in megastores for Heavy Metal from A to Z!
At the same time, Brazilian’s underground scene brought to the world one our of most famous Thrash Metal exports: Sepultura; along with Melodic Metal bands such as Angra and Shaman. Since the beginning of the underground Brazilian scene, Thrash Metal was the musical style that was better represented by the bands, and so on.
Well, after that digression from the heyday period, during the 2,000s’ first decade, Brazil was invaded by international bands. Think about a band that you support and certainly they have already played in Brazil!
Back to Nervosa’s first gig of their upcoming world tour, they chose their home city to kick it off – Sâo Paulo. If I am not wrong, at first Nervosa announced the gig with just them playing at Carioca Clube Venue, which has a 2,000 people capacity (and, by the way, is one of the best and most traditional venues to hold Heavy Metal gigs). Unfortunately Brazil, as a whole country, struggles like hell due to fucked politicians, economic issues, and tons of party corruption. Add to that the well-known Ticket Master gigs monopoly (meaning that by 2020 tickets to gigs became too expensive for the audiences), and with around 10 international bands playing monthly in Brazil the scene is less and less accessible to the metalheads. Attending all the gigs is a long-gone dream – mostly due to really expensive prices practice nowadays.
So, it was a difficult truth to recognize that an exclusive Nervosa gig would likely struggle to pull in a full arena of fans. So, as is happening nowadays, the concert producers – Dark Dimensions – had to turn the gig into a one-day festival, adding five more bands to the bill. The festival began at 2.30 p.m. and wasn’t set to finish until 11:00 p.m.! But this format made the gig a good deal, and helped to pack the venue with metalheads. The venue also made their profit selling alcohol all night long – Brazilian Metal fans drink alcohol to an insane degree!
Thanks to the Metal Gods I quit drinking six years ago – otherwise I wouldn’t be here reviewing Dark Dimension Fest – that’s for sure. So, let’s get inside the Dark Dimension fest
Elm Street
Unfortunately, due to my body now being 50 years old, I couldn’t cover the whole day. I showed up to watch the 3 last shows – that is the limit I can handle standing up in a crowd, barely moving my feet. That is very painful, as some of you can figure it out.
To be honest I had never listened to a single song from the Australian band Elm Street, but I can tell you that they are a remarkable band playing live. The execution of the songs is very nailed and the band has an amazing stage presence. Led by the guitarist/singer Ben Batres with a great job from bass player Nick Inkovic, and an impressive technique and locomotive-like playing by Tomislav Perkovic on the drums. But what Aaron Aide does with his Ibanez guitar altered by a luthier is something that hypnotizes the audience. Two Humbuckers pickups and a single pickup, and tremolos plus some distortion pedals empower the guitar axe, that’s definitely influenced by Satriani and Alex Skolnic.
That was what the audience was blessed on songs such as ‘Face the Reaper’, ‘The Last Judgement’ and ‘Barbed Wired Metal’ – which proves that the Thrash Metal Underground is strong all around the world. Ben Batres is a great singer and riff maker, and was constantly evoking the audience to take part in the one hour concert. And the frontman was clever when he said that they grew up listening to Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Sepultura among others epic bands and announces the next song: ‘Running Free’ from the early Maiden catalogue that drove the fans crazy. That was a very smart move to be applauded by the whole audience. At that time, the venue was holing about 1,000 fans. If you’ve never heard Elm Street, check out their record on Spotify to experience how powerful the Australian Thrash/NWOBHM scene is.
https://www.facebook.com/metalelmstreet
Torture Squad
Torture Squad is a well known band in Brazil, having been around since the 90’s, with a huge fan base, who know all the band’s song and lyrics. All the musicians from Torture Squad are virtuoso players: bass man Castor, guitar player Rene Simionato, May Puertas on feracious vocals and the drum master Amílcar Cristofaro. Torture Squad released a couple of records since the 90’s and, at this gig, they opted to run with their last album, “Develish” (2023).
And what a gig Torture Squad delivered on stage – all the guitar solos were nailed, and May Puertas Gore-style vocals full of technique, along side his brilliance as a master of ceremonies for the band, made this amazing. It’s hard to highlight only one or two songs in such a cohesive gig – from the opening song, ‘Hell is Coming’ they kept on punishing the audience with technical Death Metal peppered with some Thrash Metal lines, for example on such songs such as ‘Abducted Was the Case’.
They announced and invited the reverenced Metal singer Leather Lione to take part in the show, singing with May Puertas the Torture Squad’s anthem, ‘Warrior’. At the end of their set they added another great touch. Amílcar Cristofaro remembered the recent death of Cristiano Fusc, who was a previous TS musician in the band’s first line-up.
“We wish to Cristiano Fusc to Rest in Power!”
Torture Squad executed a perfect presentation, commanding the stage, even with the fans getting nuts for the festival headliner, Nervosa. Is relevant to mention that Carioca Clube’s equipment is very good, letting all the instruments be heard and with an above-average weight, which made the fans even more excited.
https://www.facebook.com/torturesquad
Nervosa
Nervosa took the stage delivering an aggressive manner of playing in sequence at full power, 220W! The band’s presence on stage was killer, with the crowd going wild, responding insanely to the new musicians in Nervosa, and supporting Prika, the frontwoman and lead singer since the last album “Jailbreak”. I guess that lots of fans have already heard the band Nervosa, because they use to tour all around the world. After the Brazilian gigs, they are heading to South America, Europe and United States.
As I mentioned earlier, the current tour will celebrate 15 years of Nervosa, and delivering an aggressive Thrash Metal at its best. The band have had quite a few changes of line up, since 2020, when they parted ways with Fernanda Lira and Luana Dameto, who gave life to Crypta, a Death Metal band that also tour all around the world. After the musicians departed, Prika invited Mia Wallace in on bass, Diva Satanica for vocals and Eleni Mota on the drums, and together they recorded the great album “Perpetual Chaos” (2021). While the tour to support the new album was running, the band again parted ways, leaving Prika alone, once more.
As the Thrash Metal didn’t stop running in Prika’a veins, she got a new line-up for the band and decided to become the lead singer of Nervosa and hired the Greek girls assault, formed by the talented and great performer guitar player Helena Kotina, drummer Gabriela Abud and bass player Hel Pyre – who was replaced by the young and brave bass player Emmelie Herwegh at this gig.
Prika is getting better as a lead singer and it didn’t take long for her to be relaxed while singing the new songs as well as ones from the Nervosa old catalogue. They even played two songs from the very first albums, “Kill the Silence” and “Urânio em Nós”.
Prika was always talking with the audience, who were out of their minds to be part of the longest Nervosa gig ever (18 songs). The band announced Alex Camargo, from the worldwide band from Brazil, Krisiun, who sang “Ungrateful” with Prika. And another surprise acts got on stage to make a stand about violence and prejudice against women singing João Gordo (from the well know Thrash Punk band Ratos de Porão) lyrics, ‘Cultura do Caos’, with Prika Amaral side-by-side with Mayara Puertas e Yasmin Amaral, giving life to an intimidating six women on stage, who really meant business – ‘don’t fuck with them’.
During the long set, Nervosa kicked ass on such songs as the opening track ‘Seed of Death’, and ‘Nail the Coffin’, which had hypnotic guitar solos, proving that Prika took the right decision hiring a solo guitar player to join the pack – it gave more power to the guitar presence on the songs and also helped Prika to get used to play and sing at the same time. ‘Perpetual Chaos’ was another avalanche that buried all the fans into the pit, too. Amazing show!
Well, I could go on endlessly reporting Nervosa’s gig, along with the good and respectful audience, that is a recurrent theme in Heavy Metal festivals. The gig ended with Nervosa throwing out some merch to the fans, and after the set we’d just seen, this first gig of the 15th anniversary tour was a great success!
https://www.facebook.com/nervosa
For my final words, I’d like to thank Dark Dimensions and JZ Press for making it possible for me to show up and write this review. That can be unusual in our scene. Underground bands and supporters must learn to play the business side of music with more partnerships and not insist on predatory relationships that don’t add anything to promote our strong underground scene all around Brazil and fans all over the world.
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Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of The Metalphysicist and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
