Heavy, black and death metal, film soundtracks, classical orchestration, dramatic symphonic elements, and gothic synthesizers, with lyrics about reflection, conscience, mental imprisonment, phobias, and psychological disorders, which exorcise deep terrors of the mind. This is Alchemia, a horror metal group from São Paulo, created in 2018 by Victor Hugo Piiroja (vocals) and completed by Rodrigo Maciel (guitar), FIFAS (bass), Alex Cristopher (drums), and Wally D’Alessandro (keyboards).

The debut album, “Inception”, was recorded at Fusao e Carbonos studios, produced by Piiroja, in collaboration with Ricardo Campos (Sunseth Midnight), who co-produced the vocals. Mixing and mastering were handled by renowned Danish producer and audio engineer Tue Madsen, who has worked with Rob Halford, Babymetal, and Moonspell, among others. The album features dramatic symphonic elements and stunning Gothic synthesizers, arranged and expanded by British composer Jon Phipps, who has created virtual orchestrations for Moonspell, Amorphis, Angra, and Dragonforce. “We have many influences on ‘Inception’, from heavy metal, black metal, death metal, film tracks, and classical orchestration. At the same time, it presents its own identity”, noted the multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Victor Hugo Piiroja, creator of the project.

In line with the aesthetics of terror in its music, Alchemia presents itself with theatrical, morbid, and macabre visual elements on stage, in collaboration with the Brazilian performance artist Coveiro Maldito.

Brazilian artist Carlos Fides, who has illustrated art for bands like Kamelot, Evergrey, Edu Falaschi, was responsible for the disturbing cover art for “Inception”, which is inspired by soundtracks from horror films, dark music, and contemporary metal. From conception to completion of the songs, all details have been carefully refined. “I decided to take the time I thought necessary to settle all the details, from composition to mastering” – explained Piiroja. “Now we will start the phase of promoting the work and spreading the concept, theme, and music of Alchemia” – he concluded. Here’s our interview with him!

Beginnings:

Alchemia is a Horror Metal band from Brazil, I’ve created the concept in my home studio (Naked Studios) alone. I wanted to mix genres and different influences to develop something new. When I finished the songs’ structure at the pre-production, I’ve started the search for the best team to compose the full band and I found Alex Cristopher, a well-known drummer in Brazil with amazing skills, it was my first choice since the writing phase. Wally D’Alessandro on the keys, he played with me a long time ago in another band and we already had a good friendship, it was an easy choice. We’ve made auditions for guitars, tried some possibilities that don’t have the Alchemia dark soul that we needed, until we found Rodrigo Maciel, and was a perfect marriage. For the bass, we had the honor of work with several great bass players, until we found our bassist soul mate Mr. FIFAS! When we finished the lineup, we went to a professional studio to record everything with pro-quality.

Naming a band is always a hard task, in Alchemia we wanted to mix genres putting in a recipe, black, death, dark, and heavy metal, with orchestrations and electronic details, so as an alchemist did in the past to create new things, Alchemia was the best name for our band!

Behind the name

Inspiration:

I’m fascinated by human behavior, the horror inside our minds, phobias, and the prison that we’ve created by ourselves. I’m always seeking inspiration everywhere; with the pandemic, we start to prioritize other things like human contact, and this will be reflected in our next album for sure.

Teamwork:

As the band creator, I’ve always chosen to work alone on songwriting, for me is the best way to keep our musical identity. When the songs are finished, the rest of the band helps me to improve the final versions in studio.

The pandemic is terrible to everyone, as a musician the best thing that we can do is working in songwriting for our second album and also internet promotion, can’t wait to start the European Tour in 2022!

COVID-19

Fun facts:

At the “Grind” video clip, each member was recorded individually first, at the same time I wanted to use the opportunity to have some promo pictures with the full band using makeup to use in our CD booklet. As soon as Alex (our drummer) finished his part, he disappeared and took away all of his makeup (it took one hour only to develop his makeup), he forgot about the promo pictures, so as we didn’t have more time for a new makeup session was, we put a lot of flour powder in his face and the rest is history! (laughs)