Ricardo Confessori

Ricardo Confessori is one of the most influential drummers in Brazilian heavy metal, and his contribution goes beyond technique: he is the one who made the Brazilian rhythmic vocabulary usable inside power metal. Born in São Paulo in 1969, he joined Angra in 1991 among its founders, and recorded Angels Cry (1993), Holy Land (1996) and Fireworks (1998) — the period in which the band built its international reputation. Holy Land is the record where his mark is clearest: the Afro-Brazilian grooves, the batuque and the percussion cells that run through the album are not exotic ornament glued onto metal, but part of the rhythmic structure of the songs. Making that work inside a genre built on European binary subdivision required understanding both languages, and few metal drummers had that dual grounding. He left Angra in 2000, together with Andre Matos and Luis Mariutti, and the following year the three founded Shaman, where he stayed through the records that defined the band. He returned to Angra between 2009 and 2013, recording Aqua (2010), and then took up Shaman again, which he still leads. He has also passed through Korzus and Massacration, besides projects of his own. With more than three decades on the road, he devotes himself as well to music production, teaching and the management of music-related businesses, activities that keep him one of the structuring figures of the Brazilian scene, and not merely an instrumentalist.