Garcez

Garcez is a stoner-doom project rooted in Vitória da Conquista, the highland city in southwestern Bahia that has quietly produced one of the more interesting regional metal scenes in northeastern Brazil, anchored by venues like Point do Rock and acts such as Black Mantra, Nazgûl, and Dumblegore. The band emerged from the same circle of musicians associated with Black Mantra, with guitarist Dimitri Garcez (credited on releases as DG) carrying through the slow, riff-centered approach that defined that earlier project into this newer instrumental vehicle. The lineup, as listed in the credits to their debut, brings DG together with BC on drums, AU on bass, and an uncredited collaborator handling organ, violins, synths, berimbau, and atabaque, the latter two being Afro-Brazilian percussion instruments that mark Garcez as something more regionally specific than a straight Anglo-American stoner copy. Their 2023 full-length Ancestral Power, released on Bandcamp and presented on YouTube as a single continuous composition divided across five movements, draws openly on the heaviest instrumental templates of Bongripper, Belzebong, and Yawning Man while folding in textures pulled from Bahian percussive tradition and a 60s-style organ solo that nods toward classic Brazilian psychedelia. The result is a record that sits comfortably alongside the wider Doomed & Stoned Latinoamerica compilation lineage but refuses to surrender its sense of place; the berimbau drone in particular makes the album unmistakably Bahian even at its most punishing. Garcez exemplify the slow, intelligent build that has come to define the Vitória da Conquista heavy scene.