Escape Project

Escape Project is a Carioca heavy metal/thrash outfit formed in Rio de Janeiro in 2020 by three veterans of the city's long-running heavy scene: vocalist Silvio Mazzei, guitarist Mauro Filler, and bassist Marcelo Duhá. The trio came together with the explicit goal of channeling the traditional heavy metal and thrash they grew up on, drawing on their decades of stage experience in a city whose hard-rock and metal lineage runs deep, from the foundational thrash of Dorsal Atlântica through the global commercial peak of Sepultura's Rio-era output and into a still-thriving underground populated by bands like Forkill. Escape Project's earliest output reflects that grounding in classic-leaning, riff-driven metal rather than the more extreme strains of the Brazilian scene. The 2022 single 'Saint or Sinner,' co-written by Filler and Mazzei with lyrics by Mazzei, set the template: muscular twin-feel riffing, mid-paced thrash propulsion, and a clean-but-aggressive vocal delivery wrestling with themes of moral ambiguity, personal choice, and the dichotomy of righteousness and sin. The lyric — 'stuck here and I have to choose between the saint or sinner' — captures the band's broader interest in introspective storytelling rather than horror or political tropes more common in their thrashier compatriots. Operating self-released through Bandcamp and connected to the broader Rio metal community that gathers around venues and festivals across the Zona Sul and Centro, Escape Project represents a particular Carioca tendency: experienced musicians returning to the style that first hooked them, building a no-frills heavy metal record one track at a time without major-label support. Their sound owes as much to NWOBHM-era melody and Bay Area-influenced thrash crunch as to the harder-edged Brazilian tradition, marking them as a band more in conversation with the international classic-metal revival than with the country's death/black underground.