XAKOL

Saulo “XAKOL” Castilho is a Brazilian musician born in the city of Caçador and currently living in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina. At age 7 he could already write poetry and at age 14 he found in music a new dimension for his art when he started playing the bass and writing his own songs. Even before that, at age 13, while searching for an original online nickname, he came up with XAKOL, a short and unique word, not attached to any language and with no special meaning, to express his identity as a pseudonym and, later, as the name of his musical project.

In 2000 he founded his first band, which recorded a home-made demo containing 4 songs, all written by him. The band was dissolved 2 years later, when he moved away from his hometown to study. In 2005 he joined the band Alpha Six as bassist, also becoming the band’s lyricist. Alpha Six enjoyed local success playing in many cities of the state of Santa Catarina. In their concerts, he often performed some songs and solos with an unusual instrument, product of his own imagination – a fretless one-string electric bass guitar made of a broom, which he named “Bassoura”, a portmanteau of the words “bass” and “vassoura” (Portuguese for broom). In 2008 he left the band, which disbanded shortly after, to conclude his master’s degree in mathematics.

After experiencing frustration with many bands and being away from music for a long period, he decided to direct his efforts to his own project, contacting former Angra singer Edu Falaschi to produce one of his albums, which will be called “Chaos Lit a Soul”. In 2015, he also decided to sing some of his songs live and invited his longtime friends Rafael Azevedo (guitar) and Daniel Schlemper (keyboards) to perform a gig. In 2016, the band found its first stable formation when Gil Lima (drums), Thiago Moser (bass) and André Freitas (guitar) joined the project. During the following years, only 2 lineup changes occurred, both at the keyboard position, currently being filled by Thiago Gonçalves.

XAKOL’s first two singles, Rise of a New Sun and Metal for Demons, were released in 2017. The latter featured guest singer Detonator, a character played by comedian and musician Bruno Sutter, voted consecutively the best singer in Brazil and also the frontman of one of the country’s top selling metal bands, Massacration.

In 2019, Saulo became the bass player for Brazilian Metal giants Noturnall, which have featured former members of internationally renowned bands such as Adrenaline Mob, Shaman, Angra and Project 46, besides guest appearances from legends like Michael Kiske (Helloween, Unisonic), Russell Allen (Symphony X, Adrenaline Mob), James LaBrie (Dream Theater), among others. His first gig with Noturnall was supporting Disturbed in Russia with an attendance of over 20,000 people. Later he performed in Rock in Rio 2019, the biggest festival in Brazil and one of the most famous in the world, and closed the year playing with one of the greatest drummers ever, Mike Portnoy, as a special guest in Noturnall’s Redemption Tour.

His music is the translation of his soul to the physical plane, the affirmation of his identity and the mirror of his personality, aiming solely at his personal artistic expression and not worrying about commercial success or critical acclaim. Though rooted in progressive and power metal, his songs have heterogeneous nature, ranging from simple and catchy melodies to atonality generated by mathematical algorithms, covering a huge variety of sub-genres of metal and rock.