Porta Magna is an Angolan death metal band formed by Frink Sanda, Manel Kav, Edson Ferraz, Ariel Ricardo, and Claudio Henriques. As Manel Kev tells it, they chose their band name for this reason:

“According to the first part (inferno) of Dante Aligierti’s Divine Comedy is the inscription that is at the entrance to hell. Porta Magna means big gate. An entrance to a mix of emotions. angers, and frustrations of society, and deprivation of liberty. It’s like hell we’re living.”

And surely we have all lived through our own distinctive kinds of hell over the last year and a half, a pandemic time in which Porta Magna was born during a covid outbreak in Angola. Deprived of rehearsals and concert opportunities, they collaborated online. Once restrictions lifted to the point when they could go to a studio, they recorded their first single at Estudio 2 in Luanda, and today we’re premiering a video for it on the day of its release by Mongrel Records. Continue reading »