Master of Guns

Master of Guns emerges from Catanduva, a mid-sized city in the agricultural heartland of northwestern Sao Paulo state, well outside the metropolitan orbit of the capital. That geography matters: Catanduva is the same interior outpost that has quietly sustained Podreira Records since 2014, a DIY imprint whose catalog of raw black metal, noisecore, and goregrind splits has shown that Brazil's most uncompromising underground noise no longer needs Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, or Rio to exist. Master of Guns belongs to that constellation, and the band's 2023 demo The War in Head plants its flag in the most primitive, bullet-belted corner of the national tradition. Tracks like Raw War Noise in Head and D. Day Will Come telegraph the intent before a single note is heard, and the closing cover of Von's Release is a declaration of allegiance: this is bestial first-wave worship, blackened war metal in the lineage that Sarcofago's I.N.R.I. and Vulcano's Bloody Vengeance violently kicked open in mid-eighties Belo Horizonte and Sao Paulo, the same vein later mined by Mystifier in Salvador and pushed to atavistic extremes by Holocausto and Mutilator. Where Norwegian second-wave bands chased melody and atmosphere, Master of Guns sticks to the Brazilian thesis that black metal should sound like a hand grenade rolling down a flight of stairs, all distorted bass throb, blown-out cymbal wash, and barked invocations buried under tape hiss. The Von tribute is telling too, slotting the project alongside the international circuit of war metal devotees, from Blasphemy's Ross Bay cult to the Iron Bonehead and Nuclear War Now! roster that has long championed Brazilian bestial acts. With a foothold in Catanduva's small but stubborn DIY infrastructure and a demo that refuses any concession to fidelity, Master of Guns is a young project hewing faithfully to a forty-year-old Brazilian extreme metal commandment: louder, rawer, uglier, and unmistakably from the interior.