Leandro Serizo, a Brazilian singer-songwriter and musicologist, has released his second album, ‘Sol Quimérico’, a trans-media project that uses a futuristic dystopia to examine contemporary issues of authoritarianism, digital alienation, and environmental collapse.
The 13-track record navigates a fusion of progressive rock, metal, MPB, and R&B, while also incorporating Afro-Latin rhythms and Eastern Mediterranean musical heritage. Serizo cites a wide range of influences, from Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan and System of a Down to Chico Buarque and Dead Can Dance.
A Dystopian Narrative Set in 2222
The album’s concept transports listeners to the year 2222, where an alien empire led by Ciborgue Tyrannus rules a technocratic society. On the fringes of this world, in a place called Abutre Estrelar, live the Abutrons: genetically engineered half-human, half-vulture beings who are cast out as aberrations and worship a chimerical sun.
Serizo describes the project as the first chapter of a larger trans-media work. The visual identity reinforces the narrative, employing an absolute black backdrop, a chessboard floor, and masked, strange beings. “The chessboard evokes the game, strategy, the duel between opposing forces, and it anchors this dystopia in a space outside of time,” he explained.
Musical Roots and Political Urgency
Serizo’s path to the album began with a self-taught exploration of a family keyboard at age eight. He later performed at school poetry and music nights, which he credits as the catalyst for his decision to become a musician. He holds a teaching degree in Music and a bachelor’s in Popular Singing from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), where he is now completing a master’s degree.
‘Sol Quimérico’ follows his 2021 debut, ‘Saudoso Amarais’, which was funded by the Campinas Cultural Incentive Fund (FICC). Reflecting on that earlier work, Serizo noted that the experience of performing those songs live solidified his passion for rock and progressive music on stage. This new album, he said, emerges from that same creative certainty but on a much larger scale.
Political and Environmental Commentary
The album’s science-fiction narrative serves as a direct commentary on current events. Serizo points to the fires in the Amazon as a key inspiration, recalling a day when the sky over Campinas, far from the fires, went dark. “I felt an urgency,” he said, citing the influence of Brazilian protest music from the 1960s by artists like Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, and Geraldo Vandré.
Within the album’s story, Ciborgue Tyrannus controls the population with a robotic song on an endless loop that erases the human capacity to dream, a metaphor for the impact of digital screens. Serizo, who works as a music educator, said he witnesses this effect firsthand. “I see up close what excessive screen consumption is doing to this generation: not just their attention span, but the way each child builds their own identity,” he said.
The track ‘G-HD’ (an acronym for ‘gerado humano digital,’ or ‘digital human generated’) depicts zombified automatons. The marginalized Abutrons, who live in the trash on the outskirts of the metropolis, represent peripheral communities. “They’re the people who build culture in exactly the place where the system said there would be nothing,” Serizo stated.
He described the album’s heaviest track, ‘CIBORGUE TYRANNUS,’ as a direct channel for his outrage over recent attacks on Palestine and Iran. The song features a poem by Miriam Silvestre that was written as those attacks were unfolding. “Brazil is a deeply divided country, and Bolsonaro’s disastrous government felt like a return to the Dark Ages,” Serizo said. “Watching the way Trump and Netanyahu are committing horrific crimes around the world is suffocating. Environmental catastrophe is political. And I believe rock, at its core, is political, too.”
Why the Year 2222?
Serizo explained that the album’s temporal setting is a deliberate reference to a Brazilian literary giant. “I like to reference the great Brazilian writer Rubem Fonseca, who wrote a book called ‘O Selvagem da Ópera’ where he says that the number 2 is the number of opposition, of duality, of the mirror,” he said. “So 2222 is the year of absolute duality, the perfect setting for a story about opposing forces.”
