When you think of Brazil you tend to think of beautiful beaches, the large Jesus statue on Mount Corcodavo, beautiful women, and maybe even steak houses. You certainly don’t think ROCK! But that’s exactly what’s blasting in my ears right now…Rock…GOOD ROCK…right out of São Paulo, Brazil. Owl Company’s first album, “Horizon,” is a good representation of where they are looking. São Paulo isn’t known for rock, it’s barely represented in Brazilian culture…and many people even believe Rock is meant to be in English, including Enrico Minelli according to the interview I had with him, but that’s about to change.
The front-man for Owl Company is a born and raised Brazilian, along with the rest of the band. They all grew up with Portuguese as their main language, but the music they loved was in English. Enrico was working in Los Angeles when the band began forming in 2014. With guitarist Felipe Ruiz still in Brazil, they began discussing ideas and writing parts via Skype before Enrico finally moved back home. The two then gathered a drummer and bass player they knew, Thiago Biasoli and Fabio Yamamoto (respectively), and started thrashing on their instruments. Enrico believes that less than 20% of Brazilians listen to rock, maybe less than 5% of them enjoy the harder rock, and that’s what Owl Company is, Hard Rock. This isn’t a Pop band trying to get the tweens to swoon, this is head-banging, release all your pent-up angst, let’s mosh until were exhausted music. Not very welcomed in Brazil, apparently…so, the guys are gearing up for an extensive American Tour to support this new album, dropping everywhere on July 14th.
The first track off of the album, “Ain’t Time For This,” gives you a nice and heavy beat to rock your neck to…not too fast, but still hard enough to make you sweat. They throw in a few tempo changes near the end just for fun. It doesn’t stop there, with Enrico’s vocal talent leading this crew of rockers and the screaming guitar of Felipe. The guitar does take center stage in many of the songs with some steady leads and killer solos. Thiago and Fabio round out the rhythm section very nicely, providing a steady and heavy backline for Enrico to focus on that powerful baritone of his.
This is hard rock, borderline heavy metal, so most of the album consists of that raspy voice of Enrico. Talking to him, you don’t quite hear the raspy voice, but there is a hint of an accent…that doesn’t carry over into his vocals. Regardless of whether you like Hard Rock like this, the talent is there and unmistakable. This CD has a permanent place in my rotation of songs. Every song sounds good, some are hits, others are good album deep cuts, but the entire piece is an incredible debut album for this new rock band out of Brazil. They are coming to San Diego and Los Angeles soon, and we’ll be there. Will you?
LISTEN TO A SAMPLE OF “HORIZON”
Big Jon / BackStage360
