Lyzzärd hit 2026 with the same spark that’s carried them from Trofa’s rehearsal rooms to the wider heavy rock underground: friendship, fire, and a taste for the fantastical. In this conversation, the Porto‑born five‑piece look back at their origins, reflect on the twists that shaped Savage and The Abyss, and tease the rebirth powering their upcoming third album. What follows is a band shedding old skin, sharpening its claws, and stepping into a new era with absolute conviction.

Interview

TheNwothm: Happy new year Lyzzärd! Please introduce the band and where you are from?

Lyzzärd: Happy New Year 2026 to you as well! We are Lyzzärd, a heavy rock band from Portugal, more specifically from Porto.

TheNwothm: Take us back to 2013. What brought the founding members together, and what moment made you realise this lineup had real chemistry?

Lyzzärd: Ah, 2013… that was quite a few years ago now. Back then, the beginning of Lyzzärd happened very naturally. We were a group of friends from Trofa, all under 20 years old at the time, sharing the same musical tastes, and we decided to get together to create a rock band. Everything felt very fresh, there was loads of energy, and because we had been friends for so long, things always ran smoothly, both inside and outside the rehearsal room.

Later on, and due to the normal circumstances of life, Margarida, David and Ted moved on, leading to the current lineup: brothers Tiago and Ricardo, André, Telmo and Luís.

Interestingly, nothing really changed in the way Lyzzärd works. It is, and always will be, a group of friends travelling through outer space, somewhere between a thousand and one nights and endless ideas, creating music both inside and outside the rehearsal room.

The chemistry has been there since day one. When you can sit at an outdoor café and talk for hours about what we can do and how we can do it better, that’s when you know there’s real physics and chemistry at play, and that everything is running smoothly. That makes us happy and pushes us to do more and do better.

Nothing makes us happier right now than the album we are currently writing. That’s for sure. It truly reflects everything Lyzzärd is at this moment in time.

TheNwothm: What made you choose Lyzzärd as a band name?And did you have any other ideas before?

Lyzzärd: That’s a bit of a funny story. On the day we decided to choose the name, we sat around a table and, after two hours, we had loads of options but none of them felt quite right, let’s put it that way haha. We decided to stop and go to rehearsal because it was getting late, and since our rehearsal space at the time was near a small wooded area, there was a lizard hanging around near the drum kit. When it saw us, it ran off and disappeared under a piece of furniture. We never saw it again… but we thought, why not?

Add a couple of extra Zs and some umlauts, à la Motörhead, and it felt like the perfect homage to Jim Morrison, while also allowing us to show the different layers we have musically. Nothing to do with FC Porto’s dragon… at least not directly haha.

TheNwothm: Trofa and the Porto region have their own character. How has living and creating music there influenced your writing, rehearsing, or even the way you approach live shows?

Lyzzärd: Both Porto and Trofa are beautiful cities. If you haven’t visited yet, you really should. Everything in these places inspires us, because we live there and absorb all the artistic culture around us. Every story, every street, the musical and artistic underground, the food, the sun, the nights… all of it feeds into our creative process.

We create especially because we are part of a huge musical movement called STOP. It’s incredible to create music knowing that there are a thousand bands rehearsing in the same place as us, all exploring different styles. It’s truly something unique in the world. A real sense of brotherhood.

Lyrically, we don’t invent that much. Our stories drift into the fantastic, but they are all rooted in real life, told in a raw, no-nonsense way, very much in mist of the spirit of Porto. And yes, you should try a typical dish called Francesinha!

TheNwothm: Portugal has a rich cultural personality and a growing heavy metal presence. What aspects of Portuguese life or local culture have naturally shaped your sound or attitude as a band?

Lyzzärd: The musical and artistic underground of this city is absolutely incredible, and being in the middle of such a rich place, where every corner offers something that inspires you in one way or another, is truly special. There’s a kind of magic hanging in the air, in the city’s mist.

You can almost smell saudade, imagination, melancholy, poetry, destruction and liberation, fantasy and intuition, creativity and fiction, friendships born on the streets and those that come from the heart. The smell of food coming from small local taverns, a cold Super Bock being poured into a glass, a heavily distorted guitar echoing down an underground alley, the beaches, the sea and the river.

Well… we could talk about this for hours on end haha

TheNwothm: When did you all get into heavy metal and what were you listening to when you were growing up?

Telmo: When I was a kid I ended up with my cousin’s MP3 player, and it had everything on it, from Blue Öyster Cult to Led Zeppelin to System of a Down. After that, LimeWire started suggesting loads of cool bands.

André: When I saw Metallica playing a concert on MTV in 2008. I was already listening to old-school thrash.

Ricardo: While growing up I listened to a lot of Guns N’ Roses, and I fell in love with heavy metal when I discovered videos of George Lynch from Dokken playing guitar.

Luís: Metallica for sure!

Tiago: When I was growing up I listened to a lot of different things, from blues to rock: Little Richard, The Beatles, Queen, Deep Purple, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden… and the list goes on.But the band that really got me into classic heavy metal was Black Sabbath.

TheNwothm: Was there as pecific album or live performance in your youth that made you think, “I want to be on a stage doing this”?

Telmo: Iron Maiden on the World Slavery Tour ’84. Absolute peak.

André: Metallica – Seattle ’89. Forbidden and Dark Angel on Ultimate Revenge 2, ’88.

Ricardo: I think it was Guns N’ Roses – Live in Tokyo. I watched that one thousand times. Ratt – Out of the Cellar. I listened to that one million times too to be honest.

Luís:I’ve listen quite a few that made me think it might actually be true. But I think Iron Maiden is the right answer.

Tiago: I think the band that made me want to get on stage and tear it up was Queen. I watched pretty much all their concerts, and LiveatMontrealis my favourite.

TheNwothm: When you are not writing or performing, what unexpected hobbies or interests keep each of you inspired or grounded?

Telmo: Racing and setting guitars on fire.

André: The gym, boxing, and Japanese.

Ricardo: Playing Pokémon. God, I’m boring haha, I don’t really have any other hobbies.

Luís: Skateboarding, gaming, sex, running, drinking and, well… sex again.

Tiago: Filming videos. I love it, from shooting to editing. I also enjoy going to the gym and watching films.

TheNwothm: Gear can be a personal thing for musicians. What pieces of equipment have become essential to your sound or your comfort on stage?

Telmo:Gear. Picks…Lots of picks…

André:SansAmp RBI, my Jackson from my year, Marshall amps, a Tube Screamer, and chorus.

Ricardo:My Lovely Stratocaster!

Luís: If I had to say something, I’d probably say my cymbals.

Tiago: As a vocalist I don’t really have much gear, but I really like the Sennheiser e835, which is my microphone. It’s not the best in the world, but I feel comfortable with it. And I also like to have a glass of port wine before going on stage to spice things up haha.

TheNwothm: Your first release, the 2014 EP Release the Hounds, introduced Lyzzärd to the world. What memories stand out from writing or recording that EP, and what did it represent for you at the time?

Lyzzärd: Well, Release The Hounds was a very young and very raw EP haha. There was a bit of everything in there, even some things we didn’t fully identify with anymore, but it was clearly an EP made with a lot of grit. We weren’t overthinking anything, we just wanted to do it.

It was the first time we went into a proper studio and worked with a producer. Honestly, it was quite an adventure… the details will have to wait for another interview.

TheNwothm: When Savage arrived in 2017, it marked your first full length. What were the key ideas or goals you wanted to capture on that album?

Lyzzärd: After the adventure that the EP turned out to be, we wanted to focus very clearly on what we actually wanted to do. Savage was truly a salvatic album. We were so focused, and we wanted so badly to make the music we were listening to at the time, that it all came together very quickly and with a huge amount of energy.

Savage really defined us, because it drew from everything we loved at the time, from films to music. I remember that before we started writing, I became completely obsessed with 70s and 80s films. All I wanted was to write semi-futuristic action-driven lyrics with a touch of mysticism, always based on real stories, of course.

That passion for mysticism and retro-futurism was already very present on that album, but there was still so much left to explore. The reception to the album was absolutely incredible, and we took a big step forward, especially after signing with Fighter Records, run by Dave Rotten.

The cherry on top of the cake, beyond the countless shows we were playing outside Portugal, was when Fenriz played one of our songs on his radio show. We remember that day perfectly. We had gone out that night, back then to the iconic Cave 45, and Iolanda, who owned the bar at the time, came up to us and said, “Congratulations, Fenriz talked about you, that’s huge!” We had no idea what she was talking about haha. We only heard it the next day. It was unbelievable.

We have so much to thank Fighter Records for, for believing in us, and especially our friends who supported us along the way, including Lucas Neves, Rui Freitas and Gustavo, who filmed our first music video and did an out-of-this-world photo shoot for us. They truly worked magic.