The first thing Spiritual Decay offer is a moment that feels lived-in and built around emotional drift. “People Fade Fast” lands as the debut chapter for a group of Brazilian musicians now rooted in Lisbon, finding each other again after years of moving through different pockets of the underground.
Helio, also from our friendly band Questions, from the band summed up the shift in a short message that set all of this in motion: “I’ve just started a new project here in Lisbon with some friends, called Spiritual Decay. We’ll be releasing our first single next week, on December 11. Do you think we could premiere it on Idioteq?” It reads almost offhand, but behind it sits a year of quiet rebuilding.
The band’s actual beginning goes back to late 2023, when several Brazilian expats realized that their shared history and unresolved creative impulses were pointing them toward a new project. Their reference points orbit Washington D.C.’s Revolution Summer—those melodic, bare-nerved bands like Embrace and Rites of Spring that shaped early emocore by letting fragility sit next to abrasion.
Spiritual Decay lean into that lineage without decoration, using melody less as sweetness and more as a way to expose the nerve underneath.
The lineup settled only after a few shifts: H. Reis on rhythm guitar and vocals, André Pamplona on lead guitar, Helio Suzuki on bass, and Thiago Di Fonzo on drums. Once things clicked, the songs started coming.
The band described the moment plainly: “It felt like someone opened a window in a room I didn’t even know I was locked inside.” The phrasing fits the music—air suddenly moving where there wasn’t any.
“People Fade Fast” was written in the shadow of losing a friend, and the song deals with the point where grief stops being static and begins to rearrange how someone sees the past.
The track works through repetition—smiles repeated to hide distance, small rituals of friendship replayed until they fall apart, the awkward pause that becomes permanent when two people stop checking in.
The lyrics ask questions without reaching for metaphors: “When the time comes, are we still friends? / Why getting older put our feelings so far away?” It’s a steady look at how presence slips into absence, sometimes without conflict, just through neglect or exhaustion.
The band frames these themes as ordinary but heavy: conversations postponed until they dissolve, people trying to break patterns inherited from their families, others struggling with addiction or cycles of self-erasure. They point to how often we miss what’s happening around us. As they put it, being consistently present for someone—actually listening—is becoming rare enough to feel like resistance against the speed of daily life.
Musically, the single mirrors that tension. It moves between melodic passages and sharper flourishes without leaning into drama. The guitars build and retract, the rhythm section keeps everything grounded, and the vocals sit close to the surface. Honest without too much production polish, heavy without theatrics, melody used as a clean line rather than ornament. It matches the band’s own description of their identity so far—raw because it needs to be, not because they’re trying to frame themselves as raw.
“People Fade Fast” is the first of two initial singles leading to their debut EP, First Four Songs, coming in 2026 on 7-inch vinyl and cassette.
The next track, “Sungazing,” will follow the same year. Together, they sketch out what Spiritual Decay want to leave behind for listeners: something modest, open, and ready to be carried into whatever rooms will have them. The band say they want to play these songs anywhere and everywhere, and the way they talk about it suggests that for them the point isn’t scale but connection—the kind that doesn’t slip away unnoticed.
