Angolan extreme metal band Eternal Katastrophy have released the animated music video for ‘Lixeiro Obscuro’, the first fully animated video in the band’s history.
Released today, 18 September, the film was directed by Rafael Bravante, with animation by Fernando Nzinga and Bravante. Editing was handled by Gedeão Soque and Bravante, with Gedeão Soque and Rafael Bravante also involved in shaping the finished visual work. The song was engineered, mixed and mastered by Jethro Harris of Paradigm Audio.
The new film gives a visual form to one of Eternal Katastrophy’s darker concepts. Speaking exclusively to AFRICA.ROCKS, the band explained the story behind the song: “For us, it is important to be able to explain what is behind the music, especially when someone shows an interest not only in the sound, but also in the concept and the story we are trying to tell.”
According to Gedeão Soque, ‘Lixeiro Obscuro’ grew from “an atmosphere of fear, suffering, despair and inevitability”.
“The song is about being trapped in a place where there is no weapon capable of saving you, where running away solves nothing and where even death ultimately becomes only a delay. In the end, the earth takes us all.”
At the centre of the song is the Lixeiro Obscuro himself, a figure created to carry the things people would prefer to leave unseen.
“The ‘Lixeiro Obscuro’ is a symbolic figure. He is the one who collects everything that is rejected, hidden or forgotten: fears, suffering, memories, people and everything that nobody wants to face. He is a kind of entity that represents that dark part of human existence.”
That idea also determined how Eternal Katastrophy approached the video. Instead of filming a conventional performance clip, the band decided to build a separate animated world around the song.
“The idea for the video came about because we didn’t want to make just another metal video. We wanted to create something with its own identity that could visually translate the madness, fear and almost surreal side of the music. So we decided to do something we had never done before: a completely animated music video. The animation gave us the freedom to create our own universe, turn the band members into characters and take the narrative to places that would have been very difficult to reach with a conventional video. It is dark, strange and aggressive, and in a way it represents very well who we are as a band.”
For the band, the bleak fictional world surrounding ‘Lixeiro Obscuro’ also carries some of the frustrations of making extreme metal in Angola.
“There is also a very strong connection with our own reality. We are an extreme metal band created in Angola, in an environment where building a band of this kind has never exactly been easy. Equipment, places to play, production, travel and international opportunities are constant challenges. But we are still here. And that is precisely the resistance we want to bring into our music.”
The band are now looking beyond ‘Lixeiro Obscuro’, with work continuing around their album Eternal War, further releases and more live activity.
“After ‘Lixeiro Obscuro’, the work continues. We are focused on promoting our album Eternal War, on new releases, concerts and, above all, taking Eternal Katastrophy into other territories and getting increasingly closer to the African and international metal scenes. We don’t want to release songs and disappear. We want to build something from Angola, open doors and show that extreme, heavy and unfiltered metal also comes from here.”
‘Lixeiro Obscuro’ is available now, with the animated music video on YouTube and the track on Spotify.
