By Sergio Silva
It is a Fusion metal band that was born during the persecution of metalheads and applied for the first time the Folk metal in Ecuador.
Calvary is an Ecuadorian band that was born in the mid-90s during the heyday of rock and metal in the country, in 1994 they made covers of alternative and pop punk songs, with which they broke it at the parties of Cotacachibut things did not end there, in 1995 they continued doing shows and concerts where they released their first song in the thrash groove metal style called “Divine sacrifice”. A few months before Christian Stephen Proaño He was arrested carrying a radio recorder with a cassette of the Brazilian band Grave which was confiscated by the gendarmes as evidence of the crime. The following year, 1996, they released the song “Open the doors for me” in the middle of concerts and “Experimental trauma” His first ballad ended with metal force, and a second ballad fused with blues called “My eternal dawn”which went unpublished for years.
In 1997 they released live “We were born without knowing” mixing alternative metal akin to new wave and “Sentianimal” ballad fused with funk. In 1998 they had been told that it would not be a good idea to fuse winds with distorted guitars in a metal song, and so they fulfilled the objective of continuing to break false myths by releasing their well-known song “Pilgrimage” in some folklore clubs in the city of Otavalo (The beginning of folk metal in the country).
There they released another song that fuses Ecuadorian pasillo with Funk and alternative metal called “Astros”after seeing that the songs were forgotten after a while of being released live, they went for the studio recording during 1998 without being able to do it, for various reasons in 1999 they composed the last two songs that were “Latin American brother” fused with guajira and “Statues of salt” also fused with folk and alternative metal, after this Christian Stephen Proaño He introduced himself as a singer-songwriter presenting the songs “Astros”, “Open the doors for me”, “Latin American brother”, “Wanderings” (Solo theme) This presentation was recorded on the collective album of the singer-songwriter concert “A dream come true” This is how these compositions and new ones appeared in the following acoustic releases of Christian: “Irreverence of the road” (2002), “Walking tribulation” (2002), “Backpacker” (2003).
In 2004 it was launched “Pilgrimage” the first work
official of Calvary where you could hear for the first time those Andean winds with metal and other fusions that the band had been proposing since the mid-90s, they continued releasing a second album in 2005 which is “Airs of Dawn” where they removed the Latin mergers and concentrated on
the standard alternative metal, in this same year they release ““Divine sacrifice” where they go for their most extreme side within metal, thus ratifying the groove
thrash metal and hardcore, then came the two compilations “The best of Calvary I”(2010), and “Songs from the 90s” (2014).
In 2019 they launched “Ancestral” which ratified them as the greatest force of metal fusion with the music of the country, which was worthy of recognition for its career from the municipality of Cotacachi in 2022 and 2023. After the pandemic they released their first live album “Miscellaneous metal”.
Calvary It is a boiling of national sounds with metal that surprises us every day.
