Cassio Audi, Ivan Busic and Jean Dolabella: Brazil’s Heavy Metal Drummers

What started as metal music in the 1960s quickly became a genre in rock music with an iconic identity of heavy metal music. The pioneer rhythm and tempo of hard rock were rooted across the US and the UK in the early 1970s, adding machismo and aggression to the traditional styles of acidic rock and blue rock. Within no time however, heavy metal music would find its home in Brazil and become the solemn identity of some of the most iconic bands in the country’s music history.

Interestingly, in most of these bands, nothing exemplifies Brazilian heavy metal music more than the drummers did. Looking back, it is evident that heavy metal drummers inspired the process of attaining an unprecedented massive sound that was curved with thick, loud, and emphatic beats. The drummers gradually introduced a rebellious, unpredictable, disruptive, and brutally blunt subgenre of hard rock into the world’s popular music. This article briefly reviews the history of Brazilian heavy metal music, from the eyesight of perhaps the most legendary of its drummers, in the persons of Cassio Audi, Ivan Busic, and Jean Dolabella.

Cassio Audi and the Age of the Viper

By every right, Cassio Audi is indeed a legend on the global scene. What most people know of Cassio however, is not as an investor, a financial expert, or the capitalistic guru who Sao Paulo University credited for opening up the Latin America market. Rather, the world knows Cassio as the heavy metal drummer helped form and consolidate Viper, Brazil’s iconic heavy metal band.

As a drummer, Cassio joined hands with Felipe Machad, Andre Matos, Pit Passarell, and Yves Passarell to create the sounds that launched Viper into the limelight. Their two pioneer demos integrated British heavy metal of the 1970s and 1980s, to a new height of heavy metal music. This was then followed by their first ever album, ‘Soldiers of Sunrise’ whose success earmarked the future success of Cassio as a drummer from his teenage years. He would soon leave the world of music behind and venture into a career in finance, but his role as a heavy metal drummer is anchored in the hall of fame as irreplaceable in the world, and more so to Brazilians.

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The Brazilian Drummer in Ivan Busic

Almost every profile and biography of Ivan Busic, both online and offline, describes him as a Brazilian drummer, regardless of how generalized and summative such a title is. However, with the high number of drummers of assorted genres and styles, Ivan Busic is a band-less drummer without an equal. The son of a Croatian father whose career was in jazz bands, a brother whose primal love was for anything rock music, Busic’s choice of being a musician was was predictably in the DNA.

Unique to him however, was an integration of rock, jazz, blues, and country music. This explains why in his late teen years, Busic and his brother formed the Prisma band, which later changed name to Platina when Sergio Semam joined. Their first rock album was not as successful and Platina dissolved two years after its formation. However, Busic went on to join another rock band called A Chave do Sol. The band’s first album, ‘The Key’, was in both English and Portuguese, becoming a success almost instantly. Regardless, Busic would eventually return to his childhood band, Platina. In the process, the band changed its name for the second time to become Slogan, and for the third time to become Cherokee, before eventually dissolving, again.

Evidently, Ivan Busic lacked a stable career profile in a rock band yet he remained a drummer all through. His lack of a band title never belittled his gift on the drum, which explains why in 1989, Brazil’s finest guitarist named Wander Taffo, invited the Busic brothers to create the first and second albums (‘Taffo’ and ‘Rosa Branca’ respectively), which would soon redefine the Brazilian music scene. The success of the two albums and the band behind them helped Busic consolidate his identity in the global scene as a heavy metal, before the band dissolved in 1992.

Still the band-less drummer, and his brother, would join Edu Ardanuy and Supla the following year to release the highly successful album, ‘Encoleirado’. That success did not deter their departure from the band, to firm his latest rock band, DR. Sin. World tours, legendary performances in the most esteemed festivals, and the ‘Bravo’ album is now gradually establishing DR. Sin in the narratives of rock bands. What people know however, what they have known encourse all the bands which dissolve faster than they are formed, is that Ivan Busic success is not because of being a band members, but a drummer. With that kind of individual brilliance, consistent independence, and personal identity, you can easily understand and accept why they call him the Brazilian drummer.

Jean Dolabella and Authoring Sepultura’s Supreme Rein

The evolution of Brazilian heavy metal music has witnessed the formation and success of many rock bands. From Holocausto to Torture Squad, from Hibria to Rebaelliun, and from Chakal to Krisiun, several bands have played a great role in shaping the Brazilian heavy metal music. However, among all these bands, Sepultura is on a class of its own in modern-day Brazil. While brief and momentous, Sepultura’s success story has and in many ways been authored by its celebrity drummer, Jean Dolabella.

Very few people know that Jean Dolabella only joined an already formed Sepultura band in 2006. His world fame came as part of the band, following unprecedenyed success in rock festivals. Before Dolabella joined Sepultura however, the original drummer was Igor Cavalera, alongside the three other band members namely Derrick Green, Andreas Kisser, and Xisto Pinto. Dolabella eventually brought a phase in the history of the band that is without question, iconic in Brazilian heavy metal music.

With the band, Dolabella has witnessed the recording and release of two great albums whose success was in many ways, unprecedented. His legendary performances on rock concerts only presented a heavy metal drummer to the world, and not the music teacher, musician, and producer that Dolabella has now decided to focus on exclusively. While the future of Sepultura is full of potential, even with the arrival of a new teen drummer, Jean Dolabella curved a niche in the band that will forever be remembered when comes to drummer and the Brazilian heavy metal music.

Cassio Audi has a new Brazilian website, find it here.