Kiko Loureiro

Brazilian guitarist Kiko Loureiro, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1972, grew up amid Brazilian popular music, rock, and metal before moving to São Paulo, where he deepened his study of classical guitar and jazz. In the early 1990s, he helped found the melodic metal band Angra, with whom he recorded Angels Cry (1993), Holy Land (1996), Rebirth (2001), and Temple of Shadows (2004), establishing an approach that blends power and progressive metal with symphonic influences and Brazilian rhythms. In parallel, Loureiro launched an instrumental solo career with No Gravity (2005), followed by Universo Inverso (2006), colored by jazz fusion and Latin American elements, then Fullblast (2009), Sounds of Innocence (2012), and Open Source (2020), where technical metal, jazz harmonies, and acoustic motifs intersect. In 2015, he joined the thrash metal band Megadeth and contributed to the albums Dystopia (2016) and The Sick, the Dying... and the Dead (2022), while continuing his educational activities and occasional collaborations in metal and improvised music. Splitting his time between Brazil and the United States, Kiko Loureiro balances session work, band projects, and the production of guitar-focused educational content.