The Foreshadowing pour l'album "Days Of Nothing"

1. Hi! I'm Dead from the French metal webzine Thrashocore and before we begin, thank you for according me some of your time. My first question will be very classical : could you present the band and sum-up your story so far?

[Alessandro] Hi Dead, thanks to you for the interview. Well, everything has begun several years ago, precisely towards the end of 90's. During that time, while I was been experiencing with death metal bands, I was thinking of setting up a new band with a gothic doom sound, the genre that I'm in since I was a kid. So I immediately kept in touch with Andrea Chiodetti on the guitar (also playing with Grimness and ex Spiritual Front) and Francesco Sosto on the keyboards (ex Spiritual Front as well as Andrea and recording sessionman for Klimt 1918), very close friends of mine, in the first place, and secondly, because they were the best performers to start this project with. So we started the three of us, but since we figured out that it was very very difficult to find other musicians that were fitting to our ideas, there was a break in no time. In the following years we had other musical experiences that made us temporarily set aside our project until the end of 2005. There was something that made us arouse the interest in our old gothic doom project, some events and encounters that made everything possible. We rejoined again and rearranged old stuff together with drummer Jonah Padella (Grimness), my old friend and bass player Davide Pesola (who I shared my experience in Klimt 1918 with) and at last Marco Benevento (vocalist and mastermind of the roman doom band How Like a Winter). He was the missing link and thanks to him we found the right formula in order to realize DAYS OF NOTHING. The evolution of this album seems like a story out of a book, but it's intended to be as appealing for us, and for this reason we got a special gratification in it.


2. "Days Of Nothing", your first album will be released in October 22nd 2007 and it's already signed by Candlelight Records. I suppose it must be a good gratitude for you. How did you make it possible?

[Alessandro] Candlelight offer has been unexpected and stunning. After the album release we have received with great pleasure several contract deals, we were about to sign to another well-known European label. Then Candlelight has suddenly come out and made such an offer that it was impossible to say no! Everything has gone very quick and exciting, and in about ten days we signed with them. I've always loved this historical label and it's a great honour for us having the chance to work with them.


3. Your style seems to be a mix of different kind of music, from gothic to doom or even dark metal elements. How would you define your style and what can we expect from this first album?

[Alessandro] Broadly speaking our style might be defined simply as gothic doom metal. Basically our aim is to go over and re-interpeter in our way a sound that seemed to be abandoned in the latest years.


4. I read that "Days Of Nothing" was mixed at Outer Sound Studio by Giuseppe Orlando from Novembre and the sound is absolutely amazing. How spent the collaboration with him? Did you find some time to listen to the last album of Novembre between 2 work sessions?

[Alessandro] Giuseppe is very talented and did a great job! However we expected as much from him, but we're surprised the same of the result if you consider that our budget was limited. There must be a reason because most of the important italian (but also european) bands go to Outer Sound Studio for recordings and mixing of their albums. We haven't listened anything from their latest album, if I'm not mistaking they hadn't started yet the recordings that time (ndlr: l'album va sortir dans une semaine).


5. Will there be a tour to promote this first album?

[Alessandro] Yes, we've been already on the move for live performances in order to promote the record all over Europe. We've been also accomplishing our live set hoping to arrange some short-range concert.


6. I read in your biography that you "just wait for a right end of this wrong and cruel world". So what makes you so sick in this world and how do you think (or eventually hope) humanity will die?

[Francesco] What we don't like about this world is that we don't take any pleasure in appreciating the simplicity of matters, and it's a thing we are all concerned, excluding nobody. Moreover these times are distinguished from a lack of respect for everything and everybody, the more one fucks you over, the more he gets power, that is the law. All that people appreciates, does it superficial. Take the music, for example. Nowadays one listens to a song for the first time, he likes it and listens ten times more, and then when gets bored, throws it away. And what it remains inside of that song? Nothing. It's because of this “throwaway” custom which also invests the music business. I think one day humanity will be swallowed up by a great apocalypse. But we conceive it as a positive event more tham a negative one, it might be a chance to reset everything and start all over again.


7. I suppose that we can find these thoughts in the texts of the album but can you tell us more about the themes you approach in the lyrics?

[Francesco] Yes, the concept of Days of Nothing comes just from this statement that I made before. It's an album about apocalypse that is to come and the man who lives his latest hours with distress, searching his souls in order to understand what he did wrong during his life. Obviously there are other subjects as the man' cynicism, the everyday life and human alienation. We also talk about death, and it's seen as positive as apocalypse, it's something which break us free from abuses of power we are subjected day by day.


8. You seem to be very pessimistic about existence and everyday life. Don't you expect anything in life personally?

[Francesco] The only one thing that we expect from our life is to keep on living for music, that is our salvation, the only thing we really believe in. This band of ours is not intended to be as a hobby or a distraction to kill the time, but as a kind of mission. We have the feeling to be born for making music, aside from the good or bad quality of it, therefore our hope is to play as much as we want.


9. Now a very provocating question: what do you do for a living apart from the band?

[Francesco] You know, since we're not rockstars and considering with things as they are nowadays it's quite impossible to earn our living doing music (I mean filesharing, download, internet etc.), so we have “normal” jobs necessarily.


10. What are you listening to theses days? Any metal album (or not) to recommend?

Paradise Lost – In Requiem; Editors – An End has a Start; Ministry – The Last Sucker; Pink Turns Blue – Ghost; HIM – Venus Doom.

Interpol – Our Love to admire; Angels of Light – We are Him.


11. Except Lacuna Coil, Novembre, Ephel Duath, Rhapsody or perhaps Addiction Crew (a very famous band on Thrashocore), the Italian metal scene is not well known around the world (the French one is worst for sure...). What do you think of it and do you know any other band to absolutely check-out?

[Alessandro / Francesco] In my opinion the italic scene is very valid and competitive, just look at bands as Klimt 1918, Room with a View, Spiritual Front, How like a Winter and the same Grimness where Jonah and Andrea do play, they make great and worthwhile music. Among other things I recommend you to check out our friends THE SUN OF WEAKNESS. Their latest full-length TROMPE L'OEIL is a very interesting work. The problem is that sometimes there's a certain distrust of the italian bands, probably due to the fact that in a lively and sunny place like ours, a band playing depressive and melancholic metal results as less credible. On the contrary, Italy is not this way. Living in Italy as a tourist is one thing, but if you really live here it's quite different, it has very negative aspects one realizes just when you live in.


12. Thank you for the interview. The last words are yours!

[Francesco] If I had to find a reason to recommend this album I would say to buy it beacuse it's a work made in all sincerity, with sacrifice and heart. We made this album because we felt it and wanted to react to disappointments that we constantly encounter along our way and creep under everything through the music, which is the only means to fight our sufferings.