Crypta

Formed in the wreckage of a departure

Crypta came together in June 2019, but the band only became public after its two founders cut ties with their previous one. Bassist and vocalist Fernanda Lira and drummer Luana Dametto left Nervosa on 25 April 2020, and announced Crypta on 20 May 2020 with a line-up completed by guitarists Tainá Bergamaschi and the Dutch player Sonia Nusselder, formerly of Burning Witches. Napalm Records signed them on 16 June 2020, roughly four weeks after the announcement and before a single note had been released.

The pandemic meant the recording came before the gigs. Echoes of the Soul was tracked in January 2021 at Family Mob Studio in São Paulo with Thiago Vakka producing, mixed by Arthur Rizk and mastered by Jens Bogren at Fascination Street Studios in Örebro. It came out on 11 June 2021, preceded by the singles From the Ashes, Starvation and Dark Night of the Soul. The band did not play its first concert until 20 November 2021, at the Porão do Rock festival in Brasília — five months after the debut album had already charted, reaching No. 55 in Germany and No. 34 in Switzerland.

The record that moved them up a tier

The second album is the one that still defines the live set. Shades of Sorrow was recorded in February 2023, again at Family Mob in São Paulo, with mixing at 33 Studios in Stockholm and mastering back at Fascination Street. Napalm announced it on 31 May 2023 and released it on 4 August: thirteen tracks across 51 minutes and 45 seconds, three of them instrumental, with all writing credited collectively to Bergamaschi, Dametto, di Falchi and Lira. The singles Lord of Ruins, Trial of Traitors and The Other Side of Anger led it out across the summer.

Lira has described it as a semi-concept record tracing a mind working through a run of hard years, and the reviews treated it as a clear step up from the debut. Metal-Rules gave it a full 5/5, Distorted Sound 9/10, Blabbermouth and Metal Injection 8.5. It charted higher than the debut everywhere it had charted before — No. 23 in Germany, No. 43 in Switzerland, No. 52 in Austria — and reached No. 71 on Billboard's Top Current Album Sales chart, the band's first appearance on a US chart. The Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte included it among the fifty best Brazilian albums of 2023.

Three years on, the album is still what gets played. Of the songs Crypta have performed most often, Lord of Ruins from Shades of Sorrow sits third with 194 outings, behind From the Ashes on 274 and Under the Black Wings on 241, both from the debut.

A guitar seat that would not stay filled

The right-hand side of the stage has been the unstable part. Nusselder left on 5 April 2022 to concentrate on Cobra Spell, making Echoes of the Soul the only Crypta album she appears on. Jéssica di Falchi came in as a touring guitarist on 13 April 2022 and was made a full member on 5 October that year, which is the line-up credited on Shades of Sorrow. She departed on 10 March 2025, described by the band as a mutual decision.

Victoria Villarreal, a Los Angeles-based player who fronts the progressive death metal band Syrebris, filled in as a guest and touring guitarist through 2025 and was confirmed as a permanent member on 19 April 2026. Lira framed it in practical terms: the chemistry worked on and off stage, and Villarreal's contribution had already been substantial. Villarreal is writing for the next record rather than simply covering existing parts, which makes her the first new member in four years to arrive before an album rather than after one.

Final Rites: retiring an album in public

Rather than quietly drop Shades of Sorrow from the set, Crypta built a tour around burying it. The Shades of Sorrow: Final Rites European summer run opened on 5 June 2026 in Duisburg at Rage Against Racism Open Air and closed on 15 August in London, taking in more than forty dates. The billing shifted constantly: festival slots, support runs with Slaughter To Prevail and Kittie, a stretch with Sepultura, and headline club shows in between. Lira's stated reasoning was that this was the last chance to hear some of these songs, because several would not be played again.

The arena dates were new ground. On 9 August 2026 Crypta opened at the 3Arena in Dublin on a bill with Sepultura, Biohazard, Bloodbath and Sacred Reich — Lira told the room it was the band's first arena show, and thanked Sepultura for showing Brazilian bands it was possible. The Moshville Times review of that night singled out Dametto's drumming as relentless and the twin guitars of Bergamaschi and Villarreal as balanced between hardcore and melodic playing, with Lira's vocal aggressive and deep. The UK leg that followed ran through smaller rooms — The 1865 in Southampton on 13 August, The Asylum in Birmingham on 14 August, Downstairs at The Dome in London on 15 August — where the sets ran roughly twice as long as the arena slots.

A single out of nowhere, and the album behind it

A Portrait of Decay arrived on 24 September 2026, the band's first new music in three years. It was recorded in Belgium in June 2026, between tour legs, and engineered, mixed and mastered by Yarne Heylen at Project Zero Studio, a departure from the São Paulo-plus-Sweden chain of the first two albums. Marcos Miller did the artwork, and a limited 7-inch pressing went up for pre-order alongside the streaming release. The lyric deals with dissociation as a way of absorbing psychological pain; Dametto described the video as a deliberate contrast to the sound of the song rather than an illustration of it.

It is not an album trailer. Speaking to Wikimetal on 27 April 2026, Lira said the third Crypta album will be fully conceptual, with madness as its subject, and that she had read five books to build its narrative and characters. Nine songs had been chosen at that point. Recording was slated for late 2026 — possibly in segments, around touring — with release targeted for 2027, and the band had turned down tour offers to protect a five-month block for writing. Lira said the proper singles would come with the album itself, which places A Portrait of Decay as a standalone rather than a first taste.

Where they are now

Since 5 October 2026 Crypta have been on a North American run supporting Arch Enemy, with The Black Dahlia Murder, Septicflesh and Thrown Into Exile also on the bill. It opened at Riverside Municipal Auditorium in California and is scheduled to finish on 16 November in Seattle. The slot is short — four or five songs, on stage before seven in the evening in some rooms — but the venues are considerably larger than the clubs the band headlined in August.

Beyond that, Area 53 in Austria and Wacken Open Air in Germany are booked for July 2027, by which point the third album is meant to exist. The sequence the band has set up is unusually clean for a group that has been touring almost continuously since 2022: an album formally retired on stage in August, a standalone single in September, a support tour through November, then studio time.