With his trilogy of ‘Vera Cruz’ (2021), ‘Eldorado’ (2023) and this year’s ‘Mi’raj’, former Angra and Almah singer Edu Falaschi reclaimed his rightful place at the upper echelons of progressive power metal. The Brazilian singer speaks candidly and extensively about the ideas behind the trilogy, his writing process, his struggles with vocal health, as well as the decline and the resurrection of his musical career.
“There are many meanings behind the trilogy, and I have actually just started speaking about them”, Falaschi says. “Since I released the first album, the first part of the trilogy, I didn’t explain why I decided to do the trilogy like this. Many people said to me: why not compose an ordinary album? It’s difficult to explain everything, but I had many difficult moments in my life, and I wanted to try and rewrite my own story and try to find a happy ending.
From the beginning, I wrote everything. But I enlisted the help of a friend of mine, who is a writer here in Brazil. His name is Fábio Caldeira. He is the singer of the band Maestrick. A very nice, progressive band. Fábio is very intelligent, and he is a writer, so he helped me to work out the details of the story. I developed the main concept of the story with him, because it was a mirror to my life.
Then, I invited him to write this work of fiction with me. Because it is fiction, but based on real history. The first album, ‘Vera Cruz’ is about when the Portuguese came to Brazil when they found this land around 1500. The second part of the trilogy, the story goes to Mexico, and there are many elements from Spanish music. This third part goes to the Middle East, and we have added elements from Arabic music. But everything is connected to my own life. I found a way to rewrite my own history and find a happy ending.”
Back to Medieval Times
“The timing turned out to be perfect, especially because this year, I’m celebrating 35 years as a professional singer. But since the idea of the trilogy came to me, I knew that it would take me around six or seven years to finish everything. So I needed to make it very tight, and very connected, to make sense to people.
Now that I have released the third and final part of the trilogy, I’m finally starting to speak about why I have done this, and telling people about the meaning of this story. I think it’s a cool story, and in the end, it’s all about hope and faith. But of course, I didn’t want to write a story about myself directly. I think that would be too boring for people. The story goes back to medieval times. Power metal fans like that.
When you think about medieval times, a lot of people tend to think about Europe. However, many events that characterize that era happened in Brazil as well. The crusaders came to Brazil as well, they came to Brazil with the Portuguese people. You can see many of those elements in Brazil: many churches, many constructions that you can see were built during this time.
The crusaders built The Order of Christ. They were everywhere. There is a Portuguese navigator called Pedro Álvares Cabral, who came from Portugal to Brazil. He was the first European to discover Brazil, actually. He was part of The Order of Christ, and really into it. That is why you can see the very famous Portuguese cross on the sails of ships. This cross is from The Order of Christ. I don’t know why people don’t like to talk about this part of history at all.”
Historically Correct
Despite the trilogy essentially being historical fiction, Falaschi took his research very seriously. “I studied everything”, he says. “For me, it’s more comfortable to talk about Brazilian history, because I’m Brazilian, so I know quite a lot about this part of history. But when we started working on the second part, the album ‘Eldorado’, the story goes to Mexico. I was very careful in how to speak about Mexican history, because it’s not my own history, and I didn’t want to commit any mistakes and talk bullshit about their history.
I didn’t tell too many people, but I was there. I traveled to Mexico, I spoke to the people there, and they told me about their own history. I talked to some indigenous people there, descendants of the Aztecs. Actually, I invited a singer to sing on ‘Eldorado’, and she was singing and speaking in the Aztec language. I didn’t understand a single word of the lyrics, but I asked her what it meant. She said it’s about when the Spanish invaded Mexico and killed many indigenous people, to find gold and everything.
For ‘Mi’raj’, I was searching for something that wasn’t super-cliché, because there are already plenty of other bands doing that. So I was really studying the culture of the Middle East. I invited a percussionist, Marcus César, and he is a specialist in these kinds of percussion and rhythms. Because I’m Brazilian, so I know percussion, but only Brazilian percussion. And I’m a metal guy, so I have my metal mind. To write these Arabian or Middle-Eastern sounds, you need to be very careful to do it in the correct way.
So I was studying these elements, the instruments… Sometimes I hear bands using elements that aren’t even part of the culture. They think it’s part of the culture, but they don’t know it isn’t. So I was really studying everything I wanted to put into the story to make sure this trilogy is very correct, historically.”
The Deeper Melodies
Falaschi’s backing band was shaken up quite a bit between ‘Eldorado’ and ‘Mi’raj’. Guitarist Roberto Barros, an important part of the songwriting team, stepped down, as did former Angra drummer Aquiles Priester, who played with Falaschi since his solo career started. “I’m used to starting the compositions in my home studio for most things”, Falaschi explains. “Then, at a certain point, I invite the rest of the guys to be part of it. But Roberto was a bigger part of the compositions from the beginning with me, and he helped me a lot with the arrangements on ‘Vera Cruz’ and ‘Eldorado’.
For this third album, I invited Victor Franco. A very young guitar player, but he’s very mature, and a very, very good guitar player. It’s a bit different than with Roberto. Roberto is more of a shred guitarist. He’s very good as well. Very intelligent. Very talented guy. But for this new album, Victor brought in some different elements. He’s not so much into these shred ideas. He is more melodic. He prefers to compose grooves and rhythm guitars. He’s very good with riffs. He helped me a lot with the deeper melodies.
It was really cool for me to work with him, because since the beginning, I didn’t want to repeat ideas too much. Of course, I have a line to follow, because it’s a trilogy, and I am a progressive power metal singer. The first two albums have a lot of speedy songs and shred stuff, and for this album, I was trying to bring in some fresh ideas. I was listening to fusion bands from the eighties and nineties, and progressive bands, like Yes, Rush and Marillion, which I love.
I was drinking from this source to compose the new album, because Victor was helping me with the compositions, and I knew he prefers these kinds of melodies. For me, it was perfect to join my wishes to compose in this direction with him, because he loves it too, and he has this fusion approach. You can really hear it in the song ‘Unchained’. I even put a saxophone solo in that song. The instrumental middle part in ‘Here I Stand’ is also very rooted in this kind of fusion rock.”
Tired of Modern Compression
“I think this album is a little bit more balanced to the others. It’s very dynamic. I was talking to Dennis Ward, the producer, who mixed and mastered my albums since the very first one. Actually, we worked together when I was in Angra. He did ‘Rebirth’, ‘Temple of Shadows’, and ‘Aurora Consurgens’, as well as many other artists, such as Helloween.
When we were discussing the sound, I asked him to mix and master this album in a slightly different way. Not so compressed. I was a little tired of this modern kind of compression, where everything is very compressed and very loud. He was happy about that. He said: fortunately, you are thinking like me, this kind of compression is not the usual thing anymore, people prefer the mix and the master to be a little bit more open.
So I asked him to do just that. Because I knew these songs would profit from a mix that would be a bit more free, and not so tight, not so compressed. I thought that would be a better fit, and he agrees, so we went ahead and did it. And there we have ‘Mi’raj’. I know it’s a cliché, but this new album is the best one of the whole trilogy for me.”
The Chance to Show Different Elements
“We had more space for everything. Power metal bass players don’t have a lot of space in the arrangements most of the time. So this time, I had the chance to give Raphael Dafras, who is a great bass player, the space to show him as a different kind of bassist. Not only power metal bass. He was grooving! ‘Unchained’, for example, has this Chris Squire kind of groove. The songs are more dynamic, and everybody had the chance to show different elements than on previous albums.
Even Jean Gardinalli, the new drummer. In my opinion, he is a mix between Aquiles Priester and Ricardo Confessori, the first Angra drummer. Ricardo is very groovy, very free. Very tight as well, but it’s more groovy. Aquiles is more of a typical power metal drummer. Very technical and very tight. Jean Gardinalli has both of these elements. We could add many elements to these album that you don’t hear on power metal albums very often.
For example: ghost notes. You never hear that, because if a drummer does that in a speedy song, you will never hear them. On ‘Mi’raj’, Jean Gardinalli had the chance to play like that, and you can hear the ghost notes on the snare perfectly. That was cool. More dynamics in the guitars as well. Many power metal bands use a distorted or overdriven guitar sound all the time, the same sound for the whole songs. On this album, we sometimes have less of a drive. For example: the beginning of the solo of ‘Unchained’ is very low-gain, and then the gain starts growing from there.
I’m very happy with the results. It’s nice to be able to show something fresh. I tried to do that between the three albums: ‘Vera Cruz’ is more power metal, more traditional. And then the second one, we have many Spanish acoustic guitars and Mexican elements – rhythms, percussion, this Aztec part is totally different from everything else. And now this album, these more groovy, dynamic, fusion-like elements… I think it’s nice to bring fresh ideas to the listener.”
Problems Singers Could Encounter
“I started singing very young. I was around 16 or 18 years old when I recorded my very first album with my first band, and since the beginning, I was very concerned about the quality of my voice when I would get older. So I started studying vocal techniques since the very beginning.
But of course, I was getting older, and then I joined Angra, which was a very, very famous band already in 2000. They had recorded three albums with André Matos, so the band was really famous at the time. Then we started touring and touring and touring. And then, even after studying the voice and all the practice I have had, I had some problems with my voice. I had acid reflux going though my throat, and it just destroyed my vocal cords. It was really, really bad.
I didn’t know that at the times, but when I started having these problems, my voice felt strange, like it was breaking sometimes. I asked myself: what the hell is happening? We just recorded ‘Rebirth’, we did two tours, I think, and we started composing the ‘Temple of Shadows’ album. Around that time, my voice felt very strange, and it was getting worse, because I didn’t know why.
At that time, doctors here in Brazil only understood how the voice worked in terms of speaking. None of them had any ideas about problems that singers could encounter. They all said to me in the beginning: you have nothing, your vocal cords are perfect. You had the reflux, but you don’t have any problems. I told them: no, because I’m trying to sing, and I can’t sing like before anymore.”
Connecting the Dots
“It took many years to discover the main reason. And the main reason was this: I had a reflux attack at night, and then the acid went through my throat, and came out through my nose. I felt the acid going out. After that, I choked, and it was really bad, because my larynx was totally blocked, and after that, my voice was even worse. So then, I started connecting the dots, and we started studying things to find a solution.
But it took me many years to really understand what was happening. I was practicing, visiting many doctors to treat this problem. Like ten doctors, outside of Brazil, in Germany. After that, after so many years, one year ago, I had surgery, and that helped me so much. It changed my life completely. I was much better.
Nowadays, it has completely recovered, mainly because of the surgery. I needed to correct many thing in my nose. I never did anything to destroy my voice. I never used drugs, I don’t drink too much – only a few beers sometimes – and I don’t smoke. So it was bad luck, actually. Just reflux.
And I was eating like shit. When I was young, I didn’t know about the correlation between food, reflux and the voice. And I never had any problems either. But I was eating like shit. Hamburgers all the time. When you are on the road, when you are touring, sometimes you don’t have the time to eat well. And then I had this problem.”
More Comfortable to Sing
“Because of all of that, when I started composing the new album, I said to myself: I’m going to compose a power metal album with different elements – as I said, progressive, fusion… But for the vocals, I prefer to be a little bit more careful. The melodies on ‘Vera Cruz’ are much higher in pitch. This album is more balanced. So I’m thinking about the future now. I hope I’m going to be seventy someday, and I will still be able to sing these songs. That’s why I made the vocal melodies more comfortable to sing. To sing live, especially.
I recorded many albums singing super high. This is there, so people can here that. On this album, the whole situation gave me kind of an authorization to write something a little bit lower, and more comfortable. This album fits that philosophy. Because it’s more progressive.
On Pink Floyd albums, there are big moments in the songs, and then it goes down, and then you have kind of a very sophisticated atmosphere. On this album, we tried to have something like that as well, so I can sometimes almost sing like I am speaking, or I can sometimes sing in a lower range. This album was the perfect time to start singing like that, a little more comfortably.”
Building the Melodies
“When I compose something, my main focus is always the song. So I’m never thinking about whether something will be easy or difficult to play live. That’s not something I’m used to doing. As I said, I did a little bit of that on this album, for the vocal melodies, but to be honest, I don’t usually think about that. It comes very naturally.
When I compose, I compose everything more or less together: melodies, harmonies, and vocal melodies. I never composed, for example, only one vocal melody, and then I think about the arrangements. No. I take my acoustic guitars or my piano, and then I start playing and singing together.
And then, of course, when I compose the melodies, I start singing with falsettos, just to build the melodies. Once I start singing the songs – really singing them – then I sometimes realize: okay, this part is a little too much, maybe I should change it a little bit. First the song, then the other stuff.”
Falaschi plays all the acoustic guitars on ‘Mi’raj’: “I always invite somebody when I can’t play the arrangements myself. I have many friends, I love them too, but if I can play it, I will play it myself. For this album, there were acoustic guitars, but the parts weren’t so difficult to play. So for me, it was natural to record them myself.”
Understanding the Sounds of Phrases
“I used to write lyrics in the bands I was in before Angra. But when I joined Angra, they had the whole concept of ‘Rebirth’ and ‘Temple of Shadows’, and Rafael (Bittencourt, guitarist) used to do it. Rafael is really, really good at writing lyrics. Actually, I learned many things from him. I was in Angra for 12 years, so I had the time to learn things with them, and I realized that in all the lyrics Rafael writes, you can see the image of it. It’s like a movie, the things he’s writing.
Then I started to compose like that. Thinking about an image, not only lyrics. Then I started composing this way in Almah too, which was my band parallel with Angra. That’s when I started composing lyrics more intensively. And then for my trilogy, for my solo career, writing like that was very natural to me.
What’s really difficult for me is writing lyrics in Portuguese. We have a song in Portuguese on the new album, ‘Intuição’, and it was my very first Portuguese song. I did sing a song in Portuguese on an Angra album called ‘Hunters and Prey’ from 2002, but writing lyrics in Portuguese is super difficult for me, because the Portuguese language is very percussive. It’s different from English. English is more melodic, and more natural to sing rock and metal.
It was very difficult to find the right words, and to not make it sound too fancy. Because sometimes, you hear Brazilian compositions, and to me, it just doesn’t sound cool. I wrote – I’m not even joking – twenty versions of the lyrics for this song until I found the final version. Writing in English is very natural to me. When I’m composing, I start singing in random words, just to see the sounds of the words I want to phrase, which vowels I want, just to understand the sound of the phrase. But in Portuguese, I can’t do that.
What’s funny is that many fans are tagging some television shows from Brazil to use the song for a Brazilian movie or a Brazilian soap opera, because it really fits with this kind of stuff. Actually, they are tagging Disney as well. Everybody said: this is a very Disney song, with Disney elements, you can use this song for a Disney movie. I don’t know why, but they say that!”
Needing to Rebuild Everything
Some media outlets seem determined to focus on the acrimony between Falaschi and Angra. Since Rafael Bittencourt plays guitar on ‘Unchained’, and Falaschi recently shared the stage with Angra, the bad blood many people claim there is doesn’t seem to be there. “There was for a while”, Falaschi admits. “But since I left the band, we took different paths. I was in Almah at the time, and then I was trying to find a new way for myself. It was actually kind of a new beginning. Because when you leave a big band, you need to rebuild everything: your career and your music.
In the year I announced I was leaving Angra, in 2012, I lost my mother. It was really hard for me. And then my voice was totally destroyed at that time. That’s why I left back then. So I lost my mother, I lost the band, I lost my voice, I lost my confidence… I lost many things. That year was really terrible for me. So I needed to restart everything, both personally and professionally.
I was with Almah, but Almah was not reaching the audience that Angra had. Almah was not doing very well. We didn’t have many gigs, and Angra was flying around the world with Fabio Lione. They were super happy and doing many interesting things, while my career was on a downward trajectory. I needed to find a way to continue, or give up.
But I thought: I composed many songs, like ‘Nova Era’, ‘Spread Your Fire’, ‘Heroes of Sand’, ‘Wishing Well’, ‘Bleeding Heart’… Important songs, and all compositions of mine. So I thought: I need to use that. It’s part of my history.”
Sing Your History
“There was a guy in Peru who invited me to play one concert, with a local band, singing only Angra songs. I told him I didn’t want to do that: I have my own band, Almah, let’s do that. He said: no, I want you to come here alone, and play with a local band, and sing Angra songs. So I went to Peru, I met the band – the band was really, really good – and played for 2000 people. People were very emotional, the fans were crying and everything, remembering the ‘Rebirth’ album and the ‘Temple of Shadows’ album.
After this concert, we were having dinner, and Joe Lynn Turner, the former Rainbow singer, was there. He asked me about my history: ‘who are you? Because I don’t know you, and I saw fans singing your songs, very emotional, so tell me about yourself’. Then I told him part of the history, just summarizing.
He said: okay, so you are doing everything wrong. You need to sing Angra songs again, because you are their old singer. You have a history. You have a legacy. You are leaving this legacy behind, but you were part of this, you were the main composer, together with Kiko (Loureiro, guitarist) and Rafael at that time. So go back to Brazil, leave this band Almah, and build a solo career singing Angra songs. Then, after that, you can do whatever you want. Go back to Brazil as a solo artist and sing your history.”
A Long and Very Hard Road
“For me, that was an eye-opener. When I came back to Brazil, I said to the Almah guys: I’m going to try and start a solo career. That’s when I started singing Angra songs again. And then the first concert in Brazil was in front of 2000 people. When we played in São Paulo, for example, with Almah, we would play for 400, maybe 500 people. And then the first solo concert: 2000 people.
After that, I was doing more concerts. It was gradually growing to the position where I am now. I did two DVD’s already: one DVD playing ‘Temple of Shadows’ with an orchestra, with a few huge mainstream Brazilian artists, and then one on which we played the ‘Vera Cruz’ album in its entirety, with a huge stage production. My career went in the right direction again. It was a long and very hard road to cross, but then fortunately, I found the way.
Sometimes it’s much, much easier to give up, and try to start again with something different. But you know, music is my life. I had my career with Angra, and once you leave the mainstream world, it’s very hard to go back to the roots, playing small bars again. It’s not so easy. The production is not good anymore, the money is not so good anymore. It’s our job, so we need to think about money as well.
Fortunately, I was always very smart with money, saving money, not spending it on things that people usually spend it on when they are famous: spending money on girls, parties and whatnot. I never did that. I was buying apartments, and I was investing money. Because of that, when I left Angra, I had the means to survive on a good level. But after that, I was of course trying to find my way. So when I was successful with my solo career, everything went the right way again.”
Investing in Your Own Career
Having access to money is not just a means of survival for Falaschi, however. His concerts and recording projects require a lot of money to do it right. “For sure, and I spent a lot of money on this project”, Falaschi nods. “Just to give you an idea: I spent between 80,000 and 100,000 dollars on the ‘Temple of Shadows in Concert’ DVD. Because the maestro (conductor João Carlos Martins) is a huge personality in Brazil, so his fee is very high. And then there was the orchestra, and the whole production.
I had 200 people working on the whole process for that concert, so it was very expensive, and I spent every cent on the production. I didn’t keep one dollar for myself for that concert and that DVD. But it was good, because I was investing in myself, in my own career. But of course, you do need to have the money to do that.
It was a pleasure for me, actually. Because I always thought that I need to give the fans a good experience. The fans deserve the best, so I wouldn’t do any DVD with a small orchestra and a shit production just to make a bit of money. I would never do that.
If I want to do something, I need to do something at a very professional level and give my best to the fans in terms of the experience, and the product as well. They are paying for that, and they pay a lot of money. So I promised myself: if I’m going to do a solo career, I’m going to start as a very professional singer, and give the fans the best production I can give.
Because actually, I’m a fan as well. I remember when I saw Dio’s concerts on television in the past, when I was young. Dio had productions with dragons on stage. I loved that. So I always wanted to do something like that for the fans, to see if they can have that same feeling I had in the past when I saw these kinds of productions.”
Disappeared in Europe
“I think this album is the one for which I received the most reviews and reactions from people from Europe and the US. I even got lots of messages from fans in the US and Europe, who were interested based on the singles that were released on YouTube. Many people told me that this album is the best of the trilogy for them. So maybe this album suits European tastes more. I don’t know. Maybe people are a little tired of very traditional power metal, and the fact that I used other elements in this album makes it more interesting to them.
The relationship between labels and artists has changed. In the beginning, we had tour support, we had video clip support, but nowadays, you don’t have that. For us artists, it’s very hard to sign an agreement with a label, just for digital distribution, no tour support, no videos, very little promotion…
That’s why I didn’t sign with anybody in Europe for the other albums. The labels that were interested demanded things that made no sense for me at the time. Giving part of merchandise and tour fees, just so they can put the album on Spotify? I can do that myself. But now, we are having good talks with a few labels in Europe, so let’s see.
I hope we can do something. Especially when it comes to promotion. For me, that’s the most important thing. You don’t need to give me money. I told them: I don’t want money, but I need promotion. I need to show the European fans that I still exist. Because to some people, I just disappeared in Europe. We are doing what we can. I hope to come back to Europe someday. I was there with Angra, and it’s beautiful there. Very nice people too.”
Order ‘Mi’raj’ and other Edu Falaschi solo releases from nearly anywhere in the world at CD Japan:
Edu Falaschi
Edu Falaschi
Edu Falaschi
Vera Cruz Live In Sao Paulo [CD + DVD]
Edu Falaschi
Edu Falaschi
Edu Falaschi
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