Holocausto’s new album Diário de Guerra is the closing of a circle, an enormous circle of time that began moving 35 years ago. It brings this Brazilian band back to where they began, and may be the completion of a changing career as well.

The new music stands defiantly on its own, but should be considered in the context of history, too. That history began in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1984 when Holocausto first began to take shape. As recounted by J. Campbell in his narrative for Nuclear War Now! Productions, which will be releasing the new album on July 31st: “Along with Sepultura, Sarcófago, Mutilator, and a handful of other bands, Holocausto played a particularly sinister-sounding strain of deathrash (or deathcore, as they used to call it in 1987), which, owing to the evil edge it exhibited, is now regarded as an early expression of the then-emerging black metal movement.” Continue reading »