Mário Linhares

Mário Linhares — Brazilian vocalist who died in 2017 — was the voice of Dark Avenger and one of the most singular figures in Brazilian metal. Dark Avenger emerged in Curitiba in the 1990s and never fitted the mould of that generation's Brazilian power metal. While most bands aimed at the speed and high notes of the European model, Dark Avenger made epic, theatrical metal, slower in tempo and dark in atmosphere, with lyrics around Arthurian mythology and themes of loss. Linhares sang in a low, dramatic register, closer to a narrator than to a power metal singer — and that choice defined the group's identity. The discography is short and widely spaced: Dark Avenger (1995), Tales of Avalon: The Terror (2001), Tales of Avalon: The Lament (2013) and The Beloved Bones: Hell (2017). Twelve years between the second and third records say something about the conditions for keeping an authorial band alive in Brazil. The Beloved Bones: Hell came out in 2017, the year of his death, and is a work of unusual weight even by the band's standards. Linhares left a body of work small in quantity and without parallel in conception — a singer who treated metal as a narrative form rather than a vocal display.