What do you want to talk about?
I have been thinking a lot about creativity lately. At the moment I am writing my first album with NUNGARA and I always have this love-hate relationship with making music because I feel like I don’t really enjoy the process. I find it so hard to write things that I am happy with. Maybe it’s perfectionism or maybe the fear of failing, or a little bit of imposter syndrome, that makes me doubt if I can make it. When I do something that I love at that moment, then on the next day, I feel like I hate everything I wrote.
So it very much feels like a process for me. For the longest time I wanted to have a band where I write things. When I came to Berlin, I decided to join different bands, but it was always different projects and most of them weren’t really mine. Now that I am the vocalist, I feel like there is so much in my own hands in a way. It feels so scary that I have to write the guitar parts, lyrics, sing and play the guitar. Then I meet these artists who love making music and composing so much. I feel like there is something wrong with me because I always find it so hard to write music that I love. But then if I spend too much time without writing, I also feel sad. Like I am not really doing what I’m supposed to do. I feel frustrated, almost like life has no meaning if I’m not really creating. And then when I do create, I feel this dread: Is this the life of an artist? Is this what it means to write music and create something meaningful? I have this constant love and hate relationship. It pulls me so much that I feel I have to do it, almost like a mission I have to do. But at the same time it’s so frustrating to write music that I actually do love. I do have a few songs where I am thinking, did I even write this myself? How did I do it? Can I replicate that? It almost feels like it wasn’t me. So I find it very, very tough. But it’s a challenge I want to take for myself, to write this album.
 

How far are you in the process now?
The idea started out to do an EP because we already have one EP and then I had this concept in my mind that I wanted to tell a story. More specifically: A Brazilian legend. I wanted to bring in my roots from Brazil and tell stories that we usually don’t hear in metal. And then I had in my mind to do it with four songs. This is why we felt like the EP route would be the best. But then I started having different conversations with different people and taking advice from professionals. I remember somebody told me: You already have an EP, you should go for a full length album.
 

I think so, too. It’s the time.
Right? I know, but it feels so scary, so big. And I already have this concept in my mind for four songs… But then I got out of my own head and I was like ok, maybe if we work on an album, I can tell this story in more detail or I can bring in other topics. It can be like an extended universe. It doesn’t need to tell only this specific legend. I talked a lot with the drummer, who is also the main composer together with me, and we decided to go with a full length and see how that goes. We have two songs done already and now we are working on another four at the same time, which has never happened before. The decision to go with an album was actually more freeing than making an EP. It’s a bigger body of work, more songs, more space, so it removed the pressure of “all four songs have to be incredible”. We can write a lot and then choose which ones make the final cut. When we only had four songs to work with, I kept thinking all the songs needed to be single-worthy. Now with an album I feel like I can just create.
 

Even The Beatles had fillers on their albums.
Right! We can have fillers of our own too! So deciding to go with an album made the process way looser, because it removes the pressure of having to be perfect in all of the songs. Of course we’re still trying to make good music, but not every track needs to be “the single” or “the face of the band”. Now that we have more room, it feels way more organic, more relaxed and I feel like this is something I should have done way before. To change my mindset about how we are creating music. Now, it’s almost like accessories for the mind, something you wear one day and on the other day people will listen to something else. They’re not tattooing it on their bodies. It’s like they use it for one specific mood they are having and then they can remove it and go with something else and choose to listen to psytrance or whatever floats their boat. So the process doesn’t need to be so rigid and so stiff, I don’t think this is the way.
I’m trying to find my way through the creative process and trying to make it better, because I feel like many artists have such pleasure in writing music. I remember working with a guitar player and she always used to say: “Oh, I love composing so much, it’s so good, everything feels so awesome and sounds amazing”. And I felt so like shit! How? Can you explain it to me? These are the moments when I feel so talentless, how can somebody be so easy going. They can do like 50 songs they love, and for me it is such an arduous process.
 

But when you have doubt it doesn’t mean that you don’t have talent. Having doubt just means that your mind is in the way, telling you that it’s not good enough. But you still have the talent to write this stuff regardless. Maybe you just need to let it sit for a while and then listen to it another day and then you will see it differently. Do you discard a lot of your stuff or do you just have your doubts but you use it anyway, maybe because other people like it.
Oh yes, absolutely, we discard a lot. Specifically with this band it happens a lot, but now less and less. Especially in the beginning. I came from different styles. Back in Brazil I used to play in a thrash metal band, here in Europe I played in an alternative rock band and in a 80s hard rock band. . So I think I had so many different influences from my past. When I set out to do my own thing, when we decided to play with NUNGARA, I found it hard to understand and define what I wanted NUNGARA to sound like. Many times I would write something that I would play to the drummer and then we would be like, yeah, this sounds cool, but this doesn’t sound like NUNGARA. It wasn’t what we’re looking for, it wasn’t what we’re searching for in this band. So many things that we wrote, we just discarded because it didn’t really sound like this vision that we had in mind for what the band should sound like. Maybe the things would sound good in a LAMB OF GOD type of band or in a BLACK SABBATH type of band, but maybe it wouldn’t specifically work in NUNGARA. I think we bring those kinds of influences, but they don’t have to show too obviously. It needs to be more natural. We don’t want to be imitating anyone and we don’t want to be put in a box either. So we have to be very careful when we write, not to sound like someone else, we try to really sound like this vision we have. And that is so hard to do. So many things don’t make the cut, but now more and more we’re getting into a rhythm to develop a style that we define as NUNGARA and we are slowly diving more into that direction.
 

Do you keep the stuff you discard or is it gone?
I keep. I have so many folders!
 

Maybe some day you can listen to it later and find material that you can use for certain parts.
Yes, that’s true. This is also something we thought about for the album, to just dig sometime in the past and look at what we wrote. Because you never know, sometimes just one riff can be redone or maybe used a different way.
 

Also, when you wrote them some years ago, you are a completely different person now. You will listen to it differently than you did back then. Maybe what you didn’t like back then, now you might like or you might think of a way to play it a little bit different and then it fits. Because it’s coming from you, from your creativity. So it must be somewhere in the ballpark.

Yeah, absolutely. I should give them a try, some day.
 

Maybe now we can give the people who don’t know you a little bit of an introduction. You play in NUNGARA now, I know you played in this METALLICA tribute band and also in COBRA SPELL for a while, but before that I didn’t find very much information. So what did you do in Brazil and what brought you to Germany of all places?
I think the city really charmed me because it was sunny when I came and everybody in Berlin is so happy when it’s summer. The people smile and the parks are so green and there’s so many things to do, so many markets and sweet little places you can go and hang with a beer. It’s really lovely. I feel like the energy from the city changes so much from winter time or autumn time to summer.
So when I came during the summer, it was really nice and I thought this was a fantastic city. And I loved it here, I wish I could stay for longer and that was when I started getting to know more people and slowly making friends. And I always had it in me to travel abroad. I always wanted to live abroad, I wanted to experience different cultures. My idea was to live abroad for a year and then come back and get a “normal job” that I could rely on. But life sometimes just goes in totally different ways and one year quickly became nine years.
 
 

That’s a long time. But it goes by so fast.
Yes, it goes by so fast! And now I feel it’s like this funny spot where I love Berlin so much and I love being here. There are so many awesome things when living in Germany. Also as a musician, a metal musician. There are so many opportunities, so many festivals, so many things to do in the city. And I don’t feel like getting back to Brazil even though I love it. I go there for vacation time and family. And it’s funny, whenever I’m there I kind of don’t feel like I fit as much as before, because I think we change so much when we leave abroad. It feels like home in a way, but also not like home. And at the same time when I’m here, I miss Brazil almost like I miss home. But it’s like you live in this place where nothing feels exactly like home. But now, Berlin is more like my home for me than anywhere else. Because I really love being here.
 

I also come from a small city. When I came here it took me some time to get into the scene, because it’s so diverse and scattered into different sub-scenes. How was it for you?
I think I was lucky because I found my metal tribe really early. When we came here back in 2016 I went to a pub called Blackland. And then there I found my family in terms of the metal community at an event called Open Stage. I went there with my then boyfriend, now my husband. When we sat down at the table suddenly this guy came and started talking to us, asking us how we were doing and where we came from. He was very welcoming. His name is Carlos, later on I discovered that he was the founder of the open stage event. A while later he became my bandmate in ALKOHOLIKA. He used to play the bass, I played the guitar. In the Blackland pub I met so many warm and nice people. There was a whole community there, lots of foreigners and back in the day, we all met very regularly at the Open Stage. I think it was every second weekend, I went there countless times.
I played with so many people, different guitars, different songs, so I was always learning new music. For me it was almost like a school of rock one could say, because I could practice so much with my stage presence. You are basically playing with strangers all the time in front of a crowd and everybody is so chill and they’re not judging you.
So it was all really natural for me and then from there I became friends with many of them. We were going out with them to different parties. I joined ALKOHOLIKA also with people who were very regular as well in the open stage event. So yeah, I think I was very lucky because I got this little crew that became big friends of mine through time and they all loved metal. So I guess that was a great start.
 

What did you do before you came to Berlin?
I started out with music relatively early. I started as a violinist, actually. My mom put me in violin lessons when I was a kid, but music throughout my life was always just a side hobby. First I went to school and then I went to the university and I graduated in civil engineering. Then I worked as a civil engineer for a few years. I always had this love for metal and for music, but it was always just a side thing. Coming from Brazil where metal is not a main thing, not like here, it’s culturally not that important. In Germany there is Wacken and so many other festivals. People love metal here and they support it by going to the shows. In Brazil, even though we have a few metal festivals, it is still very much underground, so it’s not something you can really make a living out of.
But then I always had this in my mind that I wanted to come to Europe, my goal in life back in the day was making enough money so I could afford to travel here and attend Wacken Open Air every year. And now here I am so many years later with my own band and trying to play certain festivals. We played at NOAF recently, which was a huge festival for us. And I just think, oh my God, is this real? I’m actually here? I can also make it to festivals and go to the shows that I want. I can easily get a train and go watch a band within 30 minutes. Back in Brazil that was so hard because I lived in a city that wasn’t on the main route for big shows like this. So I had to travel for hours to another state to see an important band. For example, I saw IRON MAIDEN in 2009 during the Somewhere Back In Time tour. I had to travel for two hours to another city. Nowadays it’s so easy to go to a show, because I’m in Berlin. It’s like I’m living the life.
Now I am very happy that I can work with music. I also work with livestreaming content creation. A totally different thing. I feel like I am such a different person from who I was. But I feel very true to myself now, I’m very happy, I feel like I’m living my best life ever now.
 

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

Oh well, that’s so hard to think so far ahead.
 

But you must have a dream.
Absolutely. My biggest goal I hope to achieve even before 10 years, but yeah, maybe we will take that long… I really dream of continuing to play with my band, continue to release music and finally, I would say, play the big festivals that I was always so inspired to attend. I loved being there at the camp side, enjoying friends, music, going to shows and enjoying my favorite artists and discovering new metal bands. I dream now that one day I could play those stages, play Hellfest, Wacken or Graspop. It still feels very far, but at the same time, not as unattainable as before. Because before it wasn’t even on my mind, it was just a distant dream to play a festival like that one day. But nowadays I feel like it’s possible. It is hard, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, but we’re talking about dreams. I think one can dream, right?

One should dream.
Actually I already got to play some bigger stages with COBRA SPELL. My dream now is to play the big stages with NUNGARA.
 

Are you afraid when you play in front of a large audience?

When I played NOAF it was a very different experience because when I was playing with COBRA SPELL, I was only playing guitar and that’s more comfortable for me. Because I am on the side, I can chill and I can drink some more. But now it’s much more scary because I still don’t feel as much as a front woman. I think that’s because I’ve only been a guitarist way longer than a vocalist or front person. That’s scarier and sometimes I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. You know, this type of feeling. Like I know that if I stop everything to tune my guitar, everybody will be looking at me. And if I stop to drink some water, everybody will be looking at me. It feels like the spot lies on me. That is a bit scary.
When I was at NOAF with so many people it was a bit scary in the beginning, especially because people didn’t know us. We were filling in for another band that couldn’t make it. So I saw many people looking at us trying to understand what we were all about. Especially on the first two to three songs I think they could not really get us. But later on they started headbanging a little and enjoying us more. So I think it took a little time to warm them up.
I think that also reflects on the band’s feeling on stage as well, because if people are very much into it, you get that feeling. You feel more loose, you feel more like, okay, that’s working. Let’s double down. But when you have a more reserved crowd it can be a bit scary. But I’m trying to loosen it up. I’m also practicing a lot, playing and singing and we rehearse a bunch, too. And I feel that confidence comes along with putting in the work. I know I just have to do what I did a million times in the rehearsal room and also we played a lot of shows up until this point. So we can do that. Let’s just go!

Check out NUNGARA:
Website: www.nungara.band
Instagram: NUNGARA on INSTAGRAM
Instagram: Noelle on INSTAGRAM