ThanatoSchizO

] .

The promotion of InsomniousNightLift was very intense, which allowed the group to conquer a supporting act position when Katatonia and Finntroll played in Portugal in April 2003.

In February 2003, the band was for the second time in full Hard Club and this was a memorable experience for both the public and the members.

The group also wanted to present the themes of the album in a semi-acoustic version in several Fnac stores throughout the country. It was one more challenging task that culminated with showcases full of fans and curious observers.

The return to a heavier sound (2004-2005)

Having the same line-up as the previous record for the first time, the band felt the necessity to sharpen its death metal side. Baring their mind on that, the members started to compose Turbulence, the third album.

Eduardo changes from acoustic guitars to electric ones, reinforcing its importance in the band’s sound. Now the dynamic of the themes are crucial and Filipe starts to orchestrate even more carefully his keyboard lines, thus transforming the final sound into something more powerful. Patrícia reinforces the subtlety of the music by interpreting the themes with a growing confidence. To the progressive sensitivity, new elements were added: on one hand a more aggressive and direct death metal shows up and on the other hand the ethnic tendency becomes even more evident.

From late 2003 to April 2004, the band returns to Rec’n’Roll Studios. Tommy Newton, a well known German producer, was in charge of the masterization process. Both the production and the masterization enriched the album’s sound, enabling it to be stronger, addictive, appealing and presenting numerous details and layers.

The record had a special pre-release in Portugal through Misdeed Records in July 2004. Limited to the national territory and in a digipack format, it included a multimedia section with a studio diary, many promotional photos and a video with several episodes shot during the recording process. The international release was taken care of by the Australian Burning Elf Records and not by Rage of Achilles, which ended abruptaly.

Turbulence was very well received by the fans and the specialized critique, maybe because of its great timing, one in which a definitive awakening of a progressive conscience in the extreme music world occurred.

The high point occurred in January 2005, when Loud! magazine published the votes for “the best of the best” from the past year: the readers chose the album as the best national release, the band as the second best Portuguese group (right behind Moonspell) and Guilhermino as the third best national musician.

Moreover, the radio show “Holocausto” nominated the third album of the group as the second best international release of 2004, while "Songs of Darkness, Words of Light" from My Dying Bride won the first place. Also, the Portuguese magazine Underworld - Entulho Informativo emphasized the group in a poll for the best albums of 2004] . This pool shows the albums that had more playtime during the last month on the Portuguese metal radio shows.

On the 28th of June, ThanatoSchizO performed at [http://www.myspace.com/metalgdl Metal GDL Festival] (Grândola, Portugal) right after Krisiun [BRA] and Devildriver [USA] . The group was the only Portuguese band on the main stage.

Band members

Current members

* Eduardo Paulo – vocals, guitar, percussion
* Filipe Miguel – keyboard, sampling
* Guilhermino Martins – guitar, sampling, vocals
* Miguel Ângelo - bass
* Patrícia Rodrigues - vocals
* Paulo Adelino – drums, percussion

Previous members

* Marco "China" - bass
* TóMané - vocals

Discography

Thanatos (earlier name)

*"Demo '98, (Demo) )" - 1998
*"Melégnia, (EP)" - 2001

ThanatoSchizO

*"Schizo Level" - 2001
*"InsomniousNightLift" - 2003
*"Turbulence" - 2004
*"Zoom Code" - 2008

Appearances on compilations

*Entulho Sonoro 5 - L.
*Lusitania de Peso – Vol I – Sweet Suicidal Serenade
*Arauto Metálico - Vol II - Freedom Subways
*Pure Underground - Necromance Records Compilation Vol.13 - Of Lunar Water...
*Rock Sound nº6 (Portuguese edition) "Sampler CD" - Sublime Loss
*Thrash Publishing "Promo Compilation #4" - Withering Art and Nausea
*Riff nº23 "CD Vol. 6" - Suturn
*Abadon Cryptic Scripts II "Sampler CD" - Love & Death
*Thrash Publishing "Promo Compilation #1" - Raven
*Dismal Whispers... "Chapter II" - Raven

Trivia

* Demo ’98 has never had an official distribution. The band used it to participate in modern music contests and sometimes to schedule new concerts.
* Concerning the Melégnia’s release, the band had an intense internal discussion about the physical support it should have. The final decision was the CD format instead of the very used cassette tapes. By this way, ThanatoSchizO was the first metal group in Portugal to release a self-financed CD, thus opening new doors. Since then this became common practise.
* Melégnia's first song "Melégnia (Ode to the Predicted Funeral)" starts off with a tritone, a musical interval also known as "Diabolus in Musica". This chord has some historical references, since it was frequently avoided in medieval ecclesiastical singing because of its dissonant quality.
* Many questions are made concerning the origin of the name Melégnia, but the group has kept the secret on this matter. The only certainty is that it came out on the second day of its recording, during a joyful conversation between the four members of the band in the outside yard of the Rec’n’Roll Studios.
* The recording of Schizo Level was filled with intense moments and hilarious situations such as "Suturn"’s recording, in which a friend of the band, Joca, questioned himself if he had screamed “Satan” or “Suturn” in the chorus part. In fact, he screamed “Satan” but the other voices managed to disguise that little mistake.
* The songs "Suturn", "Patheon", "Tiger’s Doom" and "Thanatos" (all from the first album Schizo Level) were still composed during the pre-ThanatoSchizO phase and some of them were even played live with the first vocalist of the band. For example, "Suturn" was firstly called "Morag".
* Eduardo, ThanatoSchizO’s vocalist, was also the first vocalist of Blind & Lost and had been a member of many local death and black metal groups. During the first years (Thanatos phase), he went often with the band on the road as a roadie.
* Filipe, ThanatoSchizO’s keyboard player, joined the band while it was still called Thanatos and played in some concerts from Chaos & Disorder Tour. Until then he played in other bands in Vila Real.
* Patrícia’s first participation on the band occurred by chance during Melégnia’s recording, when someone suggested that she sang a part from the theme "Dream of Eternity". Her voice convinced Luís Barros, who immediately suggested that she should record that part.
* Paulo Adelino had a parallel project in the late 90’s called Alien’s Dark, which had a groovy death metal oriented vein. This was the opening act to one of the Thanatos concerts in Régua (Portugal).
* Guilhermino was the The Anti-Frog Project’s guitarist, a joke band with members from Holocausto Canibal, Amor-te and Fetal Incest, which performed a live concert in 2002 and split right after.
* The band’s name is many times misspelled in posters and references in the press. The most common mistakes are ThanathoSchizO and ThanatoShizO. The name of the second album is also frequently misspelled: sometimes it has spaces between words.
* There is also certain confusion about the release year for InsomniousNightLift. This record was released in January 2003 by the British Rage of Achilles. In the Portuguese market, there was a pre-release through Misdeed Records in September 2002.
* Guilhermino has recently engaged in the album production adventure and produced his first two demo CDs, which are from the brutal deathsters Encephalon (Vila Real) and the thrashers Primordial Melody (Chaves).
* The group organizes [http://www.liperske.tk Liperske] , an annual festival, which takes place in Santa Marta de Penaguião and gathers seven metal groups from various subgenres. The festival’s name comes from a private joke between the band‘s members, concerning their supposedly official drink.
* ThanatoSchizO’s first contact with their all time producer occurred in 1998, when Tarantula (the band in which Luís Barros is the drummer) played in Vila Real (Portugal) in the prestigious Copos & Rezas. Since then Luís has produced all the records of the band, except for the initial Demo ’98.
* In 2000 the band initiated the Chaos & Disorder Tour side by side with Holocausto Canibal and The Firstborn. This tour included a list of 20 concerts that established an itinerary of show rooms in Portugal.
* The band’s name comes from Sigmund Freud’s Thanatos and his interest for the human impulse towards the abyss (an urgent impulse towards death). The suffix "ShizO" is related to the mental state schizophrenia.
* It’s recurrent to refer the importance of the group in the creation of a so called “musical scene” in the northeast of Portugal, due to the many events and activities organized and co-organized by its elements. [http://www.liperske.tk Liperske Festival] , [http://www.vilametal.web.pt Vilametal] and Blind & Lost Music School are the best examples. The stigma that an inland band (and therefore away from the big metropolitan centres) could not make it in the music world was broken and a fresh motivation was inspired.
* The band has played in Festival de Carviçais for three times – in 1999, 2000 and 2004 – and played with Moonspell, Mão Morta, Durutti Column and Anger for example.
* It’s usual for the band to play live some improvised excerpts from other bands such as Pink Floyd, Survivor or Mão Morta