The Troops of Doom: Poetry of death metal

I'm not a huge fan of death metal and listen to only some seelcted bands of the genre who can deliever more than just a barrage of noise and a pile of assorted riffs and blast beats. Brazil's The Troops of Doom are definitely in my list. The band is led by ex-Sepultura and The Mist guitarist Jairo "Tormentor" Guedz, and also consists of multi-talanted guitarist and artist Marcelo Vasco (the list of the bands he has worked with as an artist is endless and includes Slayer, Testament, Kreator), bass player and hell of a singer Alex Kaffer and incredible drummer Alexandre Oliveira. I was hooked by this band right from their first EP in 2020 — the spirit of the old Sepultura was right there. Now, 4 years, some more EPs and one full-lenght album later. the band is ready to deliever its second LP "A Mass to the Grotesque" (purchase it here). A few days before the release of the album we chatted with Jairo Guedz. who is a really kind and down-to-earth guy without any stardom. 

Let's begin with some formal information about the upcoming album. When did you start collecting ideas, writing songs and recording them? 

I and Marcelo Vasco, the other guitar player, we always write guitar riffs and drum lines and some vocal lines without lyrics. So we started this work, I think, in July or August last year. We were talking about the new album and then we started to write it. Marcelo lives in another state in Brazil, it's like 1,500 kilometers from my home, it's like four hours by plane. He lives in this place which is under water now because of the rain — maybe you saw it in the news. And I went to his home and stayed there for a long time with him and his wife. So for the first time in the history of the band we could work together in the very beginning of the songwriting process . I think this was great because we could do a lot of things in a short time. On the previous records we worked separately, sending ideas via WhatsApp, “I have this idea. Could you put some guitar?” — “Yeah, I'll send you the file next week”. But when I came to Marcelo’s home and we made it together, everything was really better because we could write the whole album in a couple of months. So we started in August, and in October it was completely done. 

And how was it to live with your bandmate and his family? 

I was there not too long, one month and a half. And it was okay, because Marcelo is a very nice guy. He is very calmed down and easy going. His wife is a ballet dancer, a teacher. So he teaches girls ballet. She has her own school of ballet. So me and Marcelo stayed all days together in the studio in his home, and I saw his wife only at night before going to sleep. So we had all the time we needed and it was pretty cool. Marcelo has no kids. And it's easier to work without kids. 

Marcelo and Jairo

So you and Marcelo wrote the music. And what about the lyrics? Whose responsibility is it in the band? 

It’s me, Marcelo and Alex. Alex wrote a lot of stuff for this album also. I did some lyrics and Marcelo did a lot of lyrics. We already have maybe five, six or seven lyrics for the next album. We have a lot of things that we keep in a pipeline just for the future. For example, I woke up in the morning and had some idea in my head. I took my guitar, practiced a little bit and recorded the idea for the future. 

When we talked a couple of years ago, you said that in the beginning you wanted The Troops of Doom to sound like the old Sepultura. And what's your idea with the Troops of Doom now? Do you still want to sound like old Sepultura or do you want to develop your style and add some new elements? 

I think we are going on to find our own signature, our own style. But I love the old Sepultura music, I have it in my DNA. I wrote most of the songs of the old Sepultura. I wrote some initial riffs and songs from the “Schizophrenia” album. I cannot keep it away from me. Of course, we don’t want to be some kind of copycats of the old Sepultura, it's not our goal. But The Troops of Doom sound a little bit like Sepultura and the old bands, because I did that in the past. I still have the same influences right now. I listened to the old albums of Kreator, Slayer, Possessed, Celtic Frost, Death, Sodom. So I will always write songs with that atmosphere from the old Sepultura. I don't like too much modern metal and the way that things are going. I keep myself on the old stuff. But in the new album we already have a little bit of a new identity for The Troops of Doom. I think you can see it also on the art cover and on the cover art. You can see that the devil from the old Sepultura arts is much smaller now. He's really a little piece of the whole art. We didn't put him as the central part of the album, because we are looking for other things.

Yeah, it's very symbolic. Did you have some kind of a plan when you started writing songs with Marcelo? 

Me and Marcelo, we always balance each other. I give him some idea and he can say to me, “Okay, this is too melodic. Let's add some evil vibe to this riff. Sometimes I play something and I ask, “Do you like it?” And he's like, “Wow, it's great, but it's too modern maybe”. Marcelo is more into black metal, Scandinavian black metal. He knows more of this style than I do. So sometimes I need his help to put this black metal spice in my ideas. Sometimes I play too aggressive music and he's like, “It's aggressive from the beginning to the end. It's okay, but maybe we can put in the middle part some melodic stuff”. 

And is it easy for you to accept such criticism when you present your ideas and someone says, it's too melodic, or too modern? 

I'm really, really okay with that. I don't have this ego problem. I'm completely open to the ideas of the other guys in the band. It's okay. I don't feel like it's bad stuff for me, not at all.

I think that “Dawn of Mephisto” is your most melodic song so far. To me, it sounds like a Slayer mixed with some melodic death metal from Scandinavia, something like early In Flames.

Actually, it was my plan to do that. I wrote that melodic part, and the guys were like, “Okay, we have to take care because it's maybe too much like Arch Enemy or In Flames”. I love those bands, so that's not a problem. But we also have our own identity. So we were like, “Okay, we need to do it, we have to take the risk because it's beautiful”. But we know that we can receive some criticism for that. Some people maybe won't like it, but we don't care. I love the song. Actually, it's our next single which comes out May 17. So I hope people will like it. It's the most melodic song of The Troops of Doom, but it's something I love to do also. It also works live. When we write songs, we always discuss how they will work live. Sometimes you like a song, but it's not good when you play it live for the audience. And “Dawn of Mephisto” works very good. Maybe people can sing with Alex this part. 

Have you already played this song live? 

No, no. We only played Chapels of Unholy”. Last week we played at Summer Breeze Festival in Brazil with Anthrax and Merciful Fate and other bands. So people loved our new track. 

You live with your songs for a long time: when you write them, when you record them, when you mix and master them. And what do you feel now? Do you still return to them or do you need some time to get some rest from them? 

You know, this is something I was thinking about this morning when I woke up. I was in bed and my wife and my kids went yesterday to the United States and I'm alone in my home. So I woke up this morning, picked up my phone and thought, “I want to listen to the new album from the beginning to the end”. So this is the first album in my life since I recorded “Bestial Devastation” that I like to listen to. I mean, after writing and recording the songs, after mastering and mixing and everything, I still can’t get enough of this album. I'm really happy with the result, not only with the songs but with the whole concept of the album, and the mixing which was done in the Morrisound Studio. When I think about the cover art from Dan Seagrave, I want to listen to the album and I keep looking to the cover art.

Yeah, the album is superb! Speaking about its sound production, why did you decide to work with Andre Morais? I know he did Sepultura’s “Dante XXI”, but other than that he hasn’t produced  metal albums. 

Well, actually, we are friends with Andre. This was the first intention of the band, like, "Okay, we are friends with Andre and he understands what we do and everything. And we want him to capture our sound”. He didn't demand too much in the studio, saying “Do this or do that”. He was like, “Okay, do what you want to do. I will listen to it and then we will capture your real sound”. And it was the first time we recorded the album together. When we did previous albums, Alex recorded his parts in Rio de Janeiro, I recorded in my town, Marcelo recorded in his home. This time we went to the south of Brazil in a big new studio where Andre works and did everything there. Then we sent the recordings to the Morrisound Studio. So Andre didn't give us the kind of instructions, he didn't tell us what to do and how to play the songs. We wanted to capture the sound of our live show and didn't want to put out modern sounding record with a lot of compression, and everything too much clean. As you said, Andre has produced only Sepultura and The Troops of Doom. But he's well known in Brazil as a soundtracks producer. So his studio is a movie studio, actually. Andre won Grammy for some soundtrack. 

The previous album was mixed by Peter Tagtgreen. And I remember you said that it was your plan to mix the first album with him. Why did you decide to switch to Jim Morris? Weren't you completely happy with the job of Peter Tagtgreen or something like that? 

I think for that first album, Peter was the best. He captured everything we wanted. But the sound still was a little bit modern. I mean, it's a great album for me with a great mixing. But as I said earlier we recorded “Antichrist Reborn” separately, so we needed someone who could mix our parts together, and Peter did great job, I am very happy with his work. But this time we were in the studio together and so we wanted someone like Jim Morris to mix the new album.  Jim and Tom Morris, they are the gods of death metal in America. They have mixed a lot of great stuff in the past. So it was a dream for me also. We wanted to work with these guys as well as with Dan Seagrave who did the cover art for “A Mass to the Grotesque”. We were like, “Okay, let's put the whole budget in those two guys. We want a cover art from Dan, and we want the mixing from Jim and Tom. And that's it”.So we put all our ideas in their hands. I think that our new album sounds more organic. When Jim sent me first version of the mix, it was already great. He said, “Tell me what you want me to change”. We discussed it with Marcelo, and he was like, “I will tell Jim, that we need the drum kick like this, and more guitars here and more delay in the voice”. After a week Jim sent us second version of the mix, and it was perfect, it was the way we wanted. So we are very happy with this work too. 

I'm really impressed with the job that Dan Seagrave did for you. But you know what wonders me? You have Marcelo Vasco, a top class artist, in your band and you don't let him paint cover artworks for the Troops of Doom. 

It’s not that we don't let him do it, but he asked us to not do it. He made the cover for first EP and then he was like, “Okay, let's give a chance to another artist”. For example, Dan Seagrave is a master for Marcelo and he's a god of death metal cover art. Marcelo told me once, “If I would paint everything for the Troops of Doom, it would be the same”. Marcelo works a lot with other bands. He always works with bands at Nuclear Blast and other record labels. Every day he's working on something. So he has too much work to do. And he makes some small movies for Instagram for us. He does all arts for our t-shirts. This t-shirt I'm wearing here is a new one and it is like an old horror movie poster. 

Okay, I see. Now let's talk a bit about the title and lyrical content of the new album. In the press release, you explained the meaning of the title “A Mass to the Grotesque, but to me it was maybe a bit of a sophisticated: “This title carry the symbolism of a true ode to the ugly, the evil and the fear”. What does it mean in a more down-to-earth way, so to say? 

Yes, it's so metaphoric, right? We are celebrating the evil, but the grotesque, in this case, it's a kind of ironic stuff. If you see the news and the newspapers, you can see the grotesque everywhere nowadays, unfortunately. And also, since I was a teenager in Sepultura, people treated us as we were the grotesque in the world. So we can put everybody in this concept of grotesque, like we are on the edge, we are not as the other people are, we are not like normal people. Sometimes people call us grotesque, “Oh, your band is so aggressive. You look like bad guys on photographs”. But I am not evil. I have a family, I have four kids. But when I see the newspapers and everything, I also read a lot a of biographic books, and I always see the grotesque side of the human being. We talk about priests doing wrong stuff, we talk about kings, we talk about government, and we talk about wars, everything is grotesque for us. It's our view of grotesque.

I had a chance to read the lyrics from the new album, and they are a bit abstract, philosophic. Were they inspired by some real events? 

Me, Marcelo, and Alex, we write lyrics like they are poems full of metaphoric stuff. We don't like to be direct and straight. We like poetic stuff. So I can give you an example with “The God of Bizarre”. I was watching the news about Palestine and Israel. I don't take sides, but I was like, “Shit, man, there are kids over there”. I couldn’t see soldiers. In the old times soldiers fought with each other. But now it's only civil people, women, old people, and kids. So I was trying to write something about a child looking at the sky and seeing the flames and thinking that it could be God giving some kind of salvation and sent his angels to save the people. But it was only bombs and drones and stuff like that. So it is a metaphor between war and God's salvation and a miracle. So the song was inspired by the war between Israel and Palestine but it’s not directly about this particular war.

I also have a question about your label, Alma Mater Records. I remember you told me two years ago that you didn't want to sign to some big label. Isn't it now the time to get a better deal, a better distribution or something like that? 

I actually was talking about this with Fernando from Alma Mater. But he's on the middle of a tour with Moonspell and he has a gig here and there. So we didn't have too much time to talk. And we are very happy with this small label and how it works. I think we will never receive the budget from a big label as we receive now. They gave us a realy nice budget to do whatever we wanted. I mean, they paid for the airplane from my home to the south of Brazil to record the album in the studio with the guys, they paid to Dan Seagrave and everything. And I'm sure a big label wouldn't give us such a great budget. But this is not the only point. You're right, the real problem is the distribution for us. We have great albums and we are not seen everywhere. So we were talking, me and Fernando, about this issue with the distribution. He's looking every day for new partners to distribute our album and the other records of the the label. We also help with contacts. I want to distribute the album in Japan, and we are working on this now. Other than that we are very happy with Alma Mater’s job. And we are very happy because Fernando is not only a businessman but also a musician. He understands what we need and when we need it. 

And I guess you are excited about the upcoming European tour this summer. How did you manage to get these gigs and what kind of venues will you play? 

Me and our manager started to work on this tour last year, maybe September, October, before the album. We were talking to people in Europe, and then we found two small agencies, one in Germany and the other one in Spain. Then we started talk about a tour and the guys said it would be possible to do it. It's an underground tour. I mean, it's our first tour in Europe. I did a lot of tours in Europe, but with other bands. So, it’s first time with The Troops of Doom. And for sure, it's not a big tour. It's 22 or 23 gigs in 28 days, almost a gig every day. And we will have like five, six day offs to take a rest. We will play in small pubs and venues, some medium pubs and three festivals, but not the big ones. We are going to play in a medium festival in Poland, another one in Germany and another one in Portugal. So, they are not too big, but that's what we need for the beginning.We need to spread out our music. We have to do small places also in small cities and not only the main cities of each country. I actually love that. I love to be on the road again and visit all these places. And I love the small gigs also. They are not too crowded, but you know, 50, 100 people for me, it's okay. It's nice. It's also good for the business, because we can spread the word and our music in the underground and go all the way from the bottom to the top. Next time we’ll be able to do something better and play some big festivals in Europe and so on. We can do it every year. And each time it can be bigger than the last one. I hope so. Our manager, he's from Brazil, from Rio, but he works all his life with bands from Europe and America. He works as a tour manager for a lot of bands like Accept, U.D.O., I Am Morbid. So he has a lot of experience. He will be with us in this European tour and I think it would be great. 

A few days ago you played at Summer Breeze Brazil festival. So how was that? Did you have a chance to hang out with some bands at the backstage? 

Yes, they had four stages, two big ones and two small ones. We played on one of the small stages. And they had a huge lounge in the backstage, and everybody was there. I was there with the guys from Sepultura and Carcass and one guy from Mercyful Fate, Dan Lilker from Anthrax, Ratos de Porão and Korzus, Nervosa, Crypta, a lot of musicians and managers also. It was very nice because first of all, I was introduced to some new people I didn't know before. And I met a lot of old friends. I was looking for Ole Bang, the manager of Mercyful Fate, who is an old friend of mine.  But I couldn’t find him anywhere. So I asked another friend of mine, Eric, and he was like, “He's not the Mercyful Fate manager anymore”. And he gave me his WhatsApp number. I hadn’t talked to Ole for 15 years. And then I called him right from the backstage. “Hey, Ole, this is Jairo, man. I miss you. I'm in the Summer Breeze in Sao Paulo. Where are you?” And he told me like, “I'm going tomorrow to your hometown, Belo Horizonte. I'm now a manager of a Swedish band called ABBA”. And I was like, “What? That ABBA?” And he was like, yes, ABBA. So last Friday I was invited to the show of ABBA in my city. And I met Ole there and I gave him a hug. Almost 20 years after our last meeting. Summer Breeze gave me a chance to find my old friends. So it was great. I love festivals. It's a huge experience. It doesn't matter if you are a small band or a big band. You have to do everything in time. So everybody gets respect from everybody. This is great.

My last question is about new and upcoming bands from Brazil. Are there any young musicians who deserve to be known worldwide? 

I like the sound of Nervosa. They are already on a big label in Europe, right? And the girls live in Greece. But Prika is a good friend of us and she's from Brazil. So we consider Nervosa as a Brazilian band. We are very proud of them. There is a band from Rio called Guro. They are great and their sound is very aggressive. In Sao Paulo, we have Desalmado. They are very, very good. I think I can name Crypta also. We have a lot of great bands in Brazil. Not in my home city Belo Horizonte, unfortunately. This city was the cradle of Brazilian black and death metal in the 80s. But not now. We have a lot of cover bands and maybe the best cover bands in Brazil are from Belo Horizonte. But I don't remember new bands from here.

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