Maxwell Murderers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Maxwell Murderers is a band which was formed in Rio de Janeiro by Eduardo Seabra and Helio Azem. The band name is derived from the name of the founders street, to which they decided to pay homage and devotion to their favorite movie actor; Charles Bronson. Maxwell street is a dangerous street in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. The gory movie series Death Wish, of which Charles Bronson was the star, was their biggest concept inspiration.

Contents

[edit] The early days

In Brazil, mIRC, software designed for internet chatting, was highly popular among the youth. The Brazilian heavy metal fan base used to chat through mIRC using the popular #metaleiros channel. By that time, the biggest number of users of this channel were residents of Rio de Janeiro.

Seeing the opportunity to create a channel for Rio de Janeiro metal fans, the founder, André Dias named it #metal-rio. The first users included André Felizardo, Denis Alves, and Luis Iwasaki.

Soon #metal_rio became very popular, and was Rio de Janeiro's most popular heavy metal channel. On its one year anniversary, a meeting for the users was scheduled to take place at Shopping Tijuca, a shopping center located in Rio. At this meeting, Helio Azem, who by that time was a brand new user of the channel, was able to meet André, Luis, and Eduardo Seabra.

About six months after that meeting, Eduardo, who played guitar, and Helio, who played drums, decided to go to Staccato Studios to work on some music. They invited André to play lead guitar, Luis to add keyboards, and Felizardo for bass. Highly influenced by bands like Slayer, Ratos de Porão, Metallica and Dying Fetus, they first attempted to play a mix of thrash metal and hardcore punk. Long time friend Denis Alves was invited to take pictures and record the rehearsal on cassette. For some unknown reason, Felizardo did not show up on that day and Denis took his place on the bass.

In this first rehearsal, the band did not have access to guitar distortion, causing André's guitar to take on a sound akin to surf music. A number of factors took place on that fateful day which would determine the course of the band. Eddy was extremely unskilled on guitar, so his contribution was minimal on the band's first songs. Helio played the drums very slowly which later generated complaints within the band who thought that he should speed them up somehow. Didi included some weird water-sounding keyboards, adding an extremely unusual atmosphere to a band that was supposed to play thrash metal. There were no vocals in the band's first rehearsal. As a result, the music created in this first rehearsal completely contradicted the band's original intentions.

"Charles Bronson - The True King of Killings", their biggest hit, appeared on this first rehearsal with a very raw version without any vocals. Another remarkable song was "Hymn To The Unholy Necromantical Bull", a Spanish-influenced song which many people claim arose from the band's world music influences.

This rehearsal was released as their first demo, named Assassination Live. The record was soon spread through #metal_rio, with the band gaining a relative amount of fame on the Rio metal scene.

[edit] The Murderers rising!

With the first rehearsal becoming a huge success on mIRC network, Helio, Eduardo and André decided to turn the project into a real band. The newly-formed band invited Angélica to fill in on the bass. Dide was also fired because keyboards were no longer necessary.

Once again, Staccato Studios was the chosen place for the first official rehearsal as "Maxwell Murderers". Once again, the bass player did not show up, and this time there was no Denis to fill the post. As Eddy was not making much difference with his guitar playing, he was assigned to play the bass, leaving only André with the guitar work (now featuring a high-level distortion) and HELLio with the drums. Also, for the first time the band featured vocals performed by Eddy.

The second rehearsal was not as productive as the first one. The only thing that came out of it was the original version of "The Moshbringer", which would in the future would become a classic and a show opener. This first version was released as a single, titled A Lesson in How NOT to play Thrash Metal.

Maxwell Murderers kept playing as a three-piece for a while, but with no outstanding material being released. With the pressure beginning to rise it was time to change, again.

[edit] The Golden Years

Seeing that all their popularity was waning, HELLio and André, the band leaders, decided to once again change the line-up. Eddy was not able to play and sing at the same time, so they decided to call Denis once again, this time as a full time vocalist. This proved to be a very bad decision, since Eddy still was not getting along with the bass. So to fix this problem once and for all, Eddy switched places with Denis, becoming the lead vocalist of the band, with the second one being permanently allocated to the bass guitar.

Rudy, a melodic metal fan and friend of Denis, was invited to join the band to play lead guitar. With this line-up the band recorded a new version of their classic "Charles Bronson - The True King of Killings", which is regarded by fans as the best version of the song ever released.

Also recorded was a cover for Merdisse Extrema's, "A Grande Dúvida". Merdisse Extrema was a cult band from Rio featuring Maxwell Murderers´ friend Diogo Pesado. This was the first and only song performed in Portuguese by the band. The band also pulled out a short instrumental track simply called "Intro" and a remastered version of "The Moshbringer", with much better production values.

These four songs were packed together in the reMONSTERED EP. reMONSTERED also broke ground with its graphic design, featuring the band's most beautiful cover art ever released. This EP made the band recover all of their lost popularity and become a fever among mIRC, with thousands and thousands of downloads.

[edit] The Birth of a Genre: Bronson Metal, The First Album

Finally, Staccato Studios was booked for the band to record their long awaited debut album.

[edit] Discography

  • Assassination Live - Demo, 2003
  • A Lesson In How NOT to Play Thrash Metal - Single, 2003
  • ReMONSTERED - EP, 2004
  • Bronson Metal - Demo, 2004
  • Bronson Metal (Re-Release) - Full-length, 2004

[edit] Members

[edit] Current line-up

[edit] Past members

  • Rudy - Guitars
  • Denis - Bass
  • Eddy - Vocals
  • Didi - Keyboards
  • Colonia - Bass
  • Trinity_Xuxu - Bass

[edit] External links

[edit] Official links

[edit] Fan site

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../m/a/x/Maxwell_Murderers_8f86.html"