Climb onto the “Expresso da Escravidão” and feel the roar of Brazilian hardcore punk shaking the carriage. Ratos de Porão invite us on a wild train ride through the hidden corners of modern-day Brazil, where poverty, fear, and greed keep the locomotive chugging. With raw guitar riffs and rapid-fire vocals, the band asks a chilling question: “How much does a human life cost?” Each verse paints snapshots of migrant laborers promised freedom but paid with misery, landowners squeezing endless work from disposable bodies, and a society tempted to treat Human Rights as an optional extra.
The song is a protest anthem against contemporary slavery, showing how economic desperation can chain people just as tightly as iron shackles once did. By repeating the haunting hook, “Quanto custa um homem no Expresso da escravidão?”, the band forces listeners to confront the price of exploitation in fields and factories across the country. It is furious, it is confrontational, and it urges every passenger to pull the emergency brake before the train of injustice races any farther down the tracks.