Intervista Nervosa (Fernanda Lira)

Hi Fernanda, how are you? How is the tour going?

I’m fine, the tour so far is going like a dream ‘cause we’ve always been doing some small tours, headlining, of course we play a lot but not huge tours with bands like Destruction, so it’s our first big tour, first time supporting such huge bands and…first tour on tour bus!
It’s been great so far!

You formed in 2010 and not long after signed a contract with Napalm Records, were you expecting interest from such an important label so early in your career?

Not at all, everything that happens with this band surprises us a lot; of course we work a lot, but we leave so many things aside and because of that we naturally expect something bad from it but a lot of things surprises us positively and that is the case with Napalm; actually they got in touch with us before we even released our first EP, they very, very liked it.
I think we owe a lot to Schmier because it’s after he posted our video-clip on his Facebook profile that they got in touch with us and they showed a lot of interest.
We knew at some point we would be looking for labels and everything, but we never expected it to be so early.

You recently released your new album “Agony” after having been on the road for two years promoting “Victim of Yourself”: has all this new live experience made the recording of the new album different compared to the previous one?

Definitely!
I think touring is the most enriching experience you could ever get.
Not only you become a better human being, like you get sharper with your responsibilities and everything, but also as a musician you’re evolving and getting better every day; if you play a lot you naturally improve your technique.
Also all the bands we play with, everything we see on the road helps us improving our way of writing, like getting wider influences and seeing other styles of music people play, all of these experiences influenced in some way the album.
All the enriching experiences helped a lot the album and I think you can hear it on “Agony”: it’s a way more mature album, more technical, more aggressive.

Can you talk me about your lyrics? What are they about and what’s the inspiration behind them?

I always say that my lyrics are my dearest way of expressing myself because, you know, all my lyrics are related to human behaviour, or misbehaviour in most of the lyrics [laughs], because we’re always talking about social issues and stuff like that and the aspects of human personality that can harm not only the environment but the people around them.
When you’re living in a country such as Brazil where day to day life is really difficult, you see so many unfair things going on every day and not to get crazy you have to kind of keep them to yourself, you know, and then when I write my lyrics I have my chance to spit it all out so that’s why it’s the best way I have to express myself.
We talk about all the bad things we see in the society around us, and I think that most of them also apply to the whole world like “Intolerance Means War” talks about intolerance which is, like religious intolerance is something which is everywhere around the world.
Yeah, we always walk about human misbehaviour.
How was the recording of your latest video, “Hostages”? I’d say this is your most elaborate video so far…

It was great!
We wanted to do something ore elaborated, we wanted to shock also with this video because this song talks about the public health system in Brazil which is terrible, lots of people die every day, so with the video we wanted to express a little bit of the horror that the people live in the real life.
It was a very cool experience with all the blood and everything, it was a little bit gross but it’s a great result in the end.
I think we reached what we aimed to do and also it is pretty badass!

All female bands are not very common; did you start with the idea to form an all female band or is something that just happened?

Yeah; for me all the bands I played in previously, they were all all-female bands.
I don’t know, I guess I’ve always found playing with other girls like a way to, like, “let’s get together, let’s do something”; also I’ve always been a supporter of women in Metal, in arts, wherever, and also many women inspired me like Doro, Girlschool and lots and lots of other women.
I’ve always felt they represented me and I’ve always felt that if I had a band it would have to be and all-female to represent all the other girls who play an instrument, who are trying, who are pushed away from their dream and discouraged so I’ve always hoped to be able to represent all the other metal chicks out there.
You’ve already played many festival, other than in smaller venues like today, what sort of setting do you prefer? And is there a concert in particular you would pick as your “best one”?

Well, I think each show is special in a different way: festivals are always awesome because there are tons of people and sometimes in a festival you get to play to the same amount of people you’d play in a whole tour in just one night, so it’s really cool.
But I also like the small show like tonight where you can see the fans in the eyes, after the show you can chat together, so they’re all special in different ways.

As for the best show…I could list many, the first one that comes to my mind is a festival we played in Bogota in Colombia: it was the first time ever we played a gig outside of Brazil and it was huge, like 40000 people, there were like 1000 people in the mosh-pit, crazy, crazy, crazy!
It was just awesome, our first time playing out of our country and we were really well received

What can we expect from Nervosa’s future?

Right now we’re focused on playing, playing, playing, touring, touring, touring ‘cause this is what we like the most, we love touring and we want to promote “Agony” as much as we can.
Next year we want to do Latin American tour, we want to be back to Europe for the summer fests and everything, we want to be back to the US and also we’ll do our best to play spots we haven’t yet like Asia, Australia, New Zealand, these growing markets where people ask us to tour and we would love it .

Are you already writing some new stuff?

Oh no, no, “Agony” was just released and we are just…ahhh, getting relaxed from all the tension of writing and recording an album so for the next months we won’t think about it, just touring but then a new album will come…

Davide Sciaky