Critic's evaluation
He was born in 2022 in Alto José do Pinho, a neighborhood in Recife (PE). In just under a year, the trio Pexera HC chose the end of the third quarter of 2023 to officially launch themselves onto the Brazilian music market. Entitled Pexera, the EP symbolizes the trio's debut work.
Radio is the key element. Through it, presidential candidates' voices are heard as the stations are changed. Impactful speeches rejecting indigenous culture and disrespecting quilombolas shock the listener as they come out of Jair Bolsonaro's mouth and receive the approval of the public present at the rally. Seconds of squeaks symbolizing yet another change of station proceed the infamous and give way to a robust melody in its cynical, harsh and strong roars from the synchrony between Erison Silva's guitar and Victor Max's drums. A short dialog soon ensues. Shocking because it involves the figure of a child, a realistic metaphor for purity, naivety and immaturity, it ends in a chorus that sounds like a slogan, a factor that definitively awakens Caça Aos Homens De Bem. Here's a sharp hardcore ripening. With unreasonable influences from Raimundos, the melody is fast, desperate and explosive. Between bursts of Magno Fox's boisterous and slightly shrill bass in the foreground, Caça Aos Homens De Bem highlights Bolsonaro's rape of the national flag and rejects the religious moralism he perpetuated as a way of gaining supporters for his presidential campaign. The track is simply a letter of repudiation of an artificial society created in the Bolsonaro era.
Curiously, it begins with a rough and rugged melody, but still with a cadence that is easy to enjoy. Suddenly, Ladrão turns into an insane, dangerous, deafening and violent death metal song, complete with a guttural rasping vocal. In a scandalous tone, Ladrão is a short song, a brutal interlude that shows the coldness and hunger for power.
Returning to hardcore as a key genre, the new ambience continues with the standard Pexera HC harshness and intensity. With a penetrating melody, especially during the chorus, Positivismo sounds like an autobiographical piece, but it serves as motivation for all listeners. It encourages focus, persistence, courage and perseverance in order to pursue goals and overcome the difficulties that life may bring.
Explosive, harsh and shrill, the hardcore pronounced here, as in Ladrão, shares space with death metal while Silva, surprisingly with cleaner vocals showing a potential softness, makes Presidente a revealing of a painful truth about the country. "O Brasil não tem autoestima", shouts the vocalist in his clear disgust at the practices of a president ruled by falsehood, negligence, intolerance and authoritarianism. Presidente is the absurd social defense of a person who sells himself as strong but, deep down, suffers from the absence of condescension.
With Pexera's more commercial sound, Vão Me Matar is structured on a 4x4 base and a controlled acidity to the point of sounding melodic and contagious. Reminiscent of CPM 22's rhythmic structures, but with a deep and slightly sombre tone that also recalls Charlie Brown Jr., Vão Me Matar has an inviting chorus made up of slogans to be sung by the public during the trio's live performances. As an ode to his origins and his very essence, Silva exorcises his pride in being from the Northeast and in being a communist. Revering and inciting revolution as a way of breaking political-religious manipulation and intolerance of what is different, the singer makes Vão Me Matar a letter to be read if he is assassinated for his anti-democratic behavior by the conservative layer of the Brazilian government, a country that claims to belong to everyone.
With a mature and precise thrash metal style, Pexera HC kick off with the intro to Churrasco, a song that shows the influence of Metallica and revives the golden age of ...And Justice For All. Aggressive, imposing and explosive, Churrasco has dark touches in the midst of its stabbing guitar melody and little dips into death metal as it becomes a real rejection of racist behavior.
Surprisingly, Pexera ends with the recitation of a poem in which the melody is the tone of voice, the interpretation. And the rhythm, the verbal cadence. Oco, a verse by Jailson de Oliveira Poesis, speaks of the weight of criticism, of judgment, on the mind of the one who receives them. Treacherous, cannibalistic and deadly, each negative verb takes away the brightness, vivacity and zest for life, leaving the individual on the edge of a river of mud under a gray, icy sky. No to bullying. No to intolerance. These are unspoken slogans, but they come through in every word of the ode.
It's intense, powerful and, at times, insane. Pexera is an EP that, above all, represents the character of respect, tolerance and plurality of the members of Pexera HC. Material that seeks to shed light on an absurd past dominated by a condescending government. A rejection of everything and everyone who despises the common good and demonizes anything that deviates from pre-established social standards.
In just a few minutes, the trio from Pernambuco fill the audience's ears with truths that have been denied and overshadowed by political manipulation. Painful truths from a present that is experiencing the consequences of the past. But even so, they are untruths. Realities and facts that can have their true face visible if what is right and correct is understood, accepted and propagated.
As a work of rejection, Pexera shows the trio's anti-Bolsonaro stance. The repulsion for fascism, prejudice, intolerance and xenophobia. Limitation of thought and small-mindedness. As such, the melody was a crucial factor in representing this pent-up anger.
Mixed by the trio in the company of Daniel Farias, the EP overflows with the intensity, insanity and harshness of three important relatives of heavy metal and punk: hardcore, thrash metal and death metal. Well equalized and offering a clean, mature sound, the mixing engineering also managed to emphasize regionalism through the clarity of Silva's vocals, an important ingredient in the material as a whole.
Rounding off the technical scope is the cover artwork. Signed by Max, the work is like darkness and chaos. A blazing flame is placed in the center of a scene steeped in gloom. Meanwhile, randomly inserted into the drawing, figures communicate the struggle for freedom, respect and tolerance. A work that communicates a petition against impunity.
Released on 08/23/2023 in an independent way, Pexera is a rejection of imposed democracy, subversive morality and intolerance transfigured into acceptance. It's a stop to prejudice, fascism and political negligence in a final pleading cry for equality and respect.
