Icon Of Sin
“I’m living exciting times,” declares guitarist Marcelo Gelbcke. “Icon Of Sin, along with Landfall and Stormwarning, is one of my homes! I’ve always treated this band like one of my babies, and to consider it my official Heavy Metal band and becoming a real full member is so cool! I really love playing music with these talented guys and believe this current line-up is absolutely killer! I’ve been dreaming about this album for a long time, since we started writing it! Sharing it with the world is so exciting! I consider LEGENDS to be the best music I’ve written with Sergio so far! Get ready, Metalheads!”
“I think this album is a higher level, a perfect evolution from the first,” continues Sergio Mazul, who wrote all of the album’s lyrics and co-produced LEGENDS with along with Gelbcke. “More epic inspirations for lyrics and melodies, powerful chorus and tons of pure Heavy Metal guitar riffs. I’m sure that any kind of Metal fan--from the old school headbanger to the new generation of metalheads--will find this album a must and enjoy each one of the songs. Also, it’s one of my best musical works so far! I always give my soul in Semblant, StormWarning, and Icon Of Sin, and I’m really proud of the results that we reached. With Marcelo now part on the line-up, we have a killer live band ready to strike the stages around the globe.”
“I think we did great work in this album,” concludes singer Raphael Mendes, “we found the essence of Icon Of Sin and we have evolved our music. People will listen to it and will know that is Icon Of Sin. LEGENDS is a strong album and it has great potential. I am really happy with the songs in this album. I can say that there is more variety than our debut album. There are a couple of songs that will make people blown away, they will love it.”
LEGENDS comes hot on the heels of the success of the self-titled debut album, which was released on Frontiers during 2021.
Icon Of Sin is a band centered around the vocal talents of the popular Brazilian YouTube sensation Raphael Mendes together with two other stellar Brazilian musicians, Sergio Mazul (Semblant) and Marcelo Gelbcke (Landfall) who work as songwriters and producers.
Raphael Mendes has become a very popular figure in the YouTube world due to his jaw-dropping vocal covers. His recognition as one of the hottest new talents in metal started in 2016 when he was invited by guitarist Fabio Lima to record a YouTube video that wound up going viral. Encouraged by the reaction, Mendes launched his own YouTube channel to create more videos for fans to enjoy. As more and more fans around the world started to discover him, he was invited to join other musical projects, including Marius Danielsen's “Legend Of Valley Doom Part 2,” which also featured Michael Kiske, Vinny Appice, Mark Boals, Michele Luppi, and Diego Valdez, among others. One of the things that made Mendes' reputation grow considerably earlier in 2020, when a video series called “What if Bruce Dickinson sang in other bands” was launched. With Mendes Dickinson-esque singing style being used to cover songs by Megadeth and more, these versions impressed fans worldwide and word quickly spread in the metal community.
The band’s debut album showed a true emerging star in the work of traditional heavy metal. Sergio Mazul and Marcelo Gelbcke crafted a no-nonsense, straight-ahead classic pure heavy metal album which blew fans of Iron Maiden and classic Dio-era Sabbath away! Mendes comes out of it not as a mere imitator of someone else’s vocal style, but rather as an artist with something really hot especially for the followers of the new trends in traditional Heavy Metal revival.
LEGENDS follows up to the task of bringing forward and forging a true and solid identity for Icon of Sin. Once again, the songs stretch Raphael’s vocal capacities without any mercy taking his undeniable talents to the next musical level. Gelbcke (appearing this time also as lead guitarist) and Mazul wrote again an exciting set of tunes which--while taking inspiration from masters like Maiden, Priest, Dio, Saxon—offer a head-bangingly addictive, one hundred percent infectious, album.
Icon Of Sin already made their live debut in Brazil and look for opportunities to bring their music outside their own country.
