KAÁTAÌRA - Caminhos de Água

Extreme metal, in its most refined and experimental form, speaks Portuguese this year, with a strong Brazilian accent. We saw it with the incomparable “No Ritmo Da Terra” by Antropoceno, an album that, in case it slipped past you, we point out as one of the most surprising and solid releases of the year. Musically different as they are, “No Ritmo Da Terra” and “Caminhos De Agua” are two conceptually adjacent albums, both strongly tied to the land — understood as both nature and culture — from which their creators come, so much so that Caio Lemos, aka Kaatayra, took part in the production of one track on Antropoceno's Lp.

Lemos's musical story begins in 2019 with the first of six deeply evocative Lps (from the third one onward, they're essentially all worth tracking down), in which the metal musician from Brasília applies the atmospheric intuitions of Ulver and Burzum to Brazil's tropical forests and local tribal rhythms.
What begins with 2020's “Só quem viu o relâmpago à sua direita sabe” (Kaatayra's third album) is a path that gradually sheds words to arrive at an almost entirely sonic language, in which screams, roiling drums and tremolo-drenched guitars coexist with Brazilian tribal flutes and percussion in a naturalistic, hypnotic musical vortex. “Caminhos De Agua” marks a further step for Lemos toward local nature and history, and an even greater departure from the metal conventions of his early career. One could, in fact, call it a Brazilian avant-folk record, one that nonetheless retains metal's genetic traits in its scratched-out vocals, latent despair and brutal accelerations.

“Caminhos De Agua” is split into seven movements, yet it flows like a single river network interweaving Brazilian memory and places. It opens up, narrows, branches off into the jungle and struggles to push through bamboo and foliage, suddenly arches and then plunges into the most treacherous rapids. An ambient overture titled “Rio Preto” begins layering the typical instruments of Kaatayra's folk-metal onto the sounds of rain, but it's with the turbulent twelve minutes of “Rio sem nome” that “Caminhos De Agua” unfurls its full evocative power. The double-pedal drums keep racing over water and flutes in “Aguas Passadas”, triggering one of the album's most hypnotic moments, while an interweaving of folk songs from the Brazilian hinterland and tribal jolts over a metal backbone make the title track the record's most striking peak.

Caio Lemos doesn't disown his metal roots, nor is it our place to deny that extreme metal remains a defining trait of the music on “Caminhos De Agua”; still, it's a somewhat misleading label, one that might put off potential listeners of Kaatayra's music who come from world music and ambient backgrounds. That would be a shame, because what they'd be missing out on is one of the albums of the year and yet another chapter in a career that knows no faltering.

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05/08/2026