Macchina

Macchina was a Sao Paulo heavy/stoner outfit that operated in the early-to-mid 2010s before continuing on under a different name. The band's two full-lengths, the self-titled Macchina (2013) and Age Of Intolerance (2017), capture a moment when Brazil's biggest city was building out a real heavy-psych and stoner infrastructure, a scene that grew up around venues like Hangar 110 and Inferno Club and around a cohort of bands including Dorgas, Black Pantera (later from Uberaba but Sao Paulo-active), Atomic Bride, Cosmic Rover and the broader Abraxas/Sao Paulo Stoner Day circuit. Macchina worked the groove-laden, riff-centered end of that spectrum, less the psychedelic blues of the Recife/Pernambuco stoner cluster and more the hard, mid-tempo, vaguely post-Sabbath/post-Kyuss tradition that Sao Paulo's scene fed on; the Bandcamp tagging of stoner metal, stoner rock, heavy metal and heavy rock fairly captures a band that refused to pick a lane. Age Of Intolerance, with its pointed title, also placed the band in the politically restive Brazilian rock moment of 2017, when the country's underground was openly grappling with reactionary politics; many Sao Paulo heavy bands of the period folded that mood into riff-driven heavy rock rather than direct protest. Macchina has since changed its name and ceased to be active under this banner, but the two records remain a useful document of Paulistano heavy/stoner crossover in the mid-2010s, when the line between metal and heavy rock in Sao Paulo was being deliberately and productively blurred.