It’s struck me that we’ve featured a fair few bands from Italy recently, and it’s a pleasure to add another to the list. With the country’s proud history of opera, it’s perhaps no surprise that we have one today which is female-fronted and with powerful melodic vocals…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
Luca: We are from around the Milan area in Lombardy, Italy. We all come from different towns north-east of the big city, but it used to be close enough to often meet up and play. Of course, things have changed in the last year.
How did you meet?
Luca: It’s a long story. I first met Rob about a dozen years ago – he was teaching a high school classmate of mine how to play the bass, so we met at a party she was throwing. We shared the rock and roll passion, so we played together for a few months together with some other friends of mine, but then things took a different turn. More recently, in 2016, Rob (bass), Lore (guitars) and Vale (drums) had been rehearsing a bit together, but then Vale left for the Swedish shores, and I for Belgium. It seemed like this project was cursed. We were all back from abroad when I was hanging out at a pub with Vale and Isobelle (vocals), and they proposed me to form a band. I immediately thought of Rob and Lore to complete the line-up. Here we are today, although we have strayed a bit from the original, more melodic-metal idea we had in the beginning.
How long have you been playing as a band?
Luca: We started in 2017, so it would be about four years now. Of course, we haven’t had a chance to play much since 2020. That sucks, because we can really tell the difference when we are able to rehearse regularly. We all know how to play the songs, of course, but practice turns the band into a single organism, and that gets lost when we are forced apart for long.
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
Luca: That’s too late for that! Jokes aside, Valar Morghulis is the motto of the Faceless Men cult in the A Song of Ice and Fire saga by George R.R. Martin, mainly known as Game of Thrones because of the show.
Rob: I’m the one to blame. I’m a big fan of the saga since has been published for the first time in Italy many years ago. I always felt connected to the motto because it sounds very sinister, the meaning “All men must die” fits also perfectly for a band with dark epic themed lyrics like us.
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What are your influences?
Luca: We all come from experiences within the metal scene, but all of different kinds. I must list especially classic heavy metal such as Judas Priest for influencing my riffing and lyrics, but I owe a lot also to the Scandinavian melodic death metal scene, such as Ensiferum, Amon Amarth, Children of Bodom and such – that’s what I always try to do: mixing heavy stuff with melody and a splash of epic. Valerio is mostly influenced by black metal, Lorenzo is more of a death metal kind of guy, while Isobelle and Rob really go across the metal spectrum.
Rob: And not only metal I have to say. I’m a kind of obsessive compulsive listener. In the last days I turned back to the deathrock american scene of Christian Death, London after Midnight, Fearcult. It doesn’t matter the labels as long as I enjoy the feelings, it may be a Manowar album or the last Nick Cave/Warren Ellis release.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
Luca: It’s not easy to fit us into a genre, which is already something. Because we come from different metal sub-genres and influences, we have developed a sound that draws something from different styles. We like playing with the contrast between Isobelle’s melodic voice and growls and screams coming from me and Rob. The music is meat to support this dualism, with heavy riffing and some elements borrowed from extreme metal – such as blast-beat – combined with melodic tunes along the minor scales. We want the songs to be expressive.
Rob: I like to call it “extreme epic metal”, I think it’s the most easy way to sum up our music.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
Luca: We do not stick to a specific topic, which sometimes happens with heavily-branded bands today. However, there is a fil-rouge that connects all of our songs, and that is this dark-epic mood and this connection to life and death that is always there. We have songs about battles without winners, historical or fantasy dark themes like Erzsebet Batory or the Dreadfort Keep from A Song of Ice and Fire, we have songs about wildlife and intertwining life and death like “Where the Blackfish Dwell”, we even have one called “Violent Delights, Violent Ends”, a famous quote by Shakespeare. The most representative, though, is maybe “Queen of Hades”, about the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone: life falling in love with death, and vice versa.
Rob: Despite the band’s name our lyrics are not all linked to the Martin’s books. There are so many cool things that can be used as inspiration and we don’t want to be caged in one topic or seen as an “one theme band”. It’s more about feelings than references.
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
Luca: We must have played about 20-30 shows during the two years spanning from end 2017 to end 2019. Unfortunately, we had many more planned in 2020 to promote our first album, Fields of Ashes, but of course all got cancelled.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
Luca: I don’t recall anything really crazy, but I do remember a show where Isobelle got really wasted before getting the gig, sung bare feet on stage, and kept headbanging and moving like crazy the whole time. I was trying to do my moves and put up some show, but every time I looked up at the crowd their eyes were just stuck on Isobelle.
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What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
Luca: I was in more of a classic heavy metal contest before, so I used to play a modified Stratocaster with a bridge Di Marzo humbucker and a Laney VH100R tube amp. Now I switched to an LTD-401, a guitar I love, amped with a Blackstar digital valve emulator. I think the amp is perfect for more modern metal, it’s flexible and really a lot less expensive to maintain than tube amps.
Rob: I use Darkglass pre-amp/distortion pedal (Alpha Omega) which is really amazing plus an Ashdown MAG300 amp. I love the bass sound of Simon Gallup (The Cure), that’s why I’m trying to put more chorus effects in the melodic parts of our next releases.
What, if anything, are you plugging/promoting at the moment?
Luca: You are touching a sore spot here! We released Fields of Ashes in November 2019, had our release-party show, then played another gig beginning 2020, then everything froze due to covid. We are very disappointed we could not promote it properly, and now the album is already a year and a half old. Currently we are working on new material, experimenting new lyrical themes, such as literature and non-European mythology, while trying to keep the social networks alive.
What are your plans for the next 6 months or so?
Luca: You should ask that to policy-makers and drug companies. So far we are playing and recording stuff from home, uploading riffs and lyrics on Dropbox and giving each other feedback. We’d really like to go back to rehearsing and record a couple of songs as soon as possible. Before the pandemic, our plan was to cross the Alps and support some bigger act across South-Eastern Europe. The hope is still there.
If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be supporting and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!
Luca: A great band we’ve previously played with is Insubria, a blackened folk-metal act from our area. They are nice down-to-earth guys who play very powerful, inspired music. Had you asked me to choose a band to open for any other time, I’d always have said Ensiferum or something mighty and powerful like Septicflesh; but lately I’m a lot into Bloody Wood, an Indian band that I’d say is folk-melodic-death-nu metal or something – they seem amazing guys and they are bringing something new to the metal family, so I’d love to play with them.
Rob: I’m a Cradle of Filth fans since the late ’90s so that’s my dreams band to tour with. We played with a lot of cool underground bands in the last few years, if I got to choose someone I say Deathless legacy, Hell’s Guardian, Insubria, Amthrya and Ulvedharr. Ok, that’s more a festival!
Check out this month’s Headline Act Playlist on Spotify and YouTube