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<< Interviews this month
file under black/pagan metal
With their new CD ‘The Gorgon Cult’ Stormlord manages to leave most of the Italian metal bands far behind them in terms of quality. Admittedly I was especially surprised about this myself since I had not heard from them before. More than reason enough to check up with the band.
Text: David
First off, it has been three years since the previous album. What happened in the meantime and why did it take so long to record a follow-up to ‘At The Gates Of Utopia’.
(Cristaino Borchi – vocals): Well, after "At The Gates Of Utopia" we toured Europe and played a lot of shows here in Italy, so we did a quite long live promotion. Then we took a little break and started to work on the video of "I Am Legend”, which we released in late 2002. Then we started the songwriting process for ‘The Gorgon Cult’. Originally the album was scheduled for release in November 2003, but we needed more time for the songwriting. We took care about all the minimal details of our music, 'cause we wanted a great Stormlord back and to give the fans waiting a great album. Scarlet Records supported us in this thing, as they granted us complete freedom about the music we played and our sometime long times. They only suggest us to be ready as soon as possible, 'cause time was passing away, but no pressure what soever.
The band seems to have had several line-up changes in the past already. How come and would you say that the current line-up might be stable enough for a while?
(Cristaino Borchi): Yes, we have been through a lot of line up changes during the years, but for more than four yearsnow we have the same line up, and currently we have absolutely no kind of problems inside the band! The atmosphere inside the band is enthusiastic, for the first time in our career the final result is exactly what we were searching for, the new songs sound great to us and the production is something we did not expect, so amazing! This album is something really special, the atmosphere in studio was something I can say..."magic". You know, it's normal, when you go in the studio to record, that musicians usually discuss the desired sound and other things, as well as when you are doing songwriting. Well, this time this never happened. We are a democratic band, but no discussion was born whatsoever. We all had exactly the same ideas about everything. Sometimes it did happen that someone made a suggestion or give an idea about something that someone else was thinking to at the same time, and even the feel with our producer Giuseppe Orlando was 100% great, we were working as one person with the best of all of us united. The only line up change is the adding of the new guitar player Gianpaolo Caprino, who comes with a lot of new elements and fresh ideas, and for sure a part of the merit for the final result goes to him. He has a strong gothic background, as well as death metal, and I think his musical ideas and feel are something really special. "Wurdulak" is the song that mainly expresses the influence of Gianpaolo.
What are the main differences for you between ‘The Gorgon Cult’ and Stormlord’s previous album?
(Cristaino Borchi): It's hard to explain, a lot of people asked us to compare new albums with the previous ones, but this time is really hard for us. I feel safe to say that it is an "extended version" or "enriched version" of Stormlord. From one side the typical Stormlord feel is the same, judging by songs like "Oath Of The Legion", "Dance Of Hecate" or "Medusa's Coil". From another side, we went into new musical elements, gothic and obscure feels ("Wurdulak", "The Gorgon Cult") and majestic black metal parts as in "Under The Boards" or "Nightbreed". "The Gorgon Cult" is a Stormlord album combined with new elements that only enrich and not denature our sound. In the past, we used some key presets to play mainly the melodies of the song, this time we tried to enforce our keys concept, working on them not only as an instrument that have to play a melody, but as something that had to create atmosphere too, without being to invading. We worked with all real instrument samplers, arranged the parts very often more as an orchestra, having more variety in the use of the sounds too. The result really amazed us. I'm sure fans of songs like "The Curse Of Medusa", "Xanadu" or "I Am Legend" will also like songs as "Oath Of The Legion", "Dance Of Hecate" or "Medusa's Coil". We like to play this kind of songs and we can't wait to play them on stage, but we wanted to do ten songs in the same way, "Supreme Art Of War part 2" or "At The Gates Of Utopia part 2", it could be boring and not enjoyable for both fans and us as musicians. I personally don't like bands that completely change their style on a new album and it's something we'll never do. But at the same time we don't want to be a joke and become copies of ourselves. So I think fans will understand this and all will hail "The Gorgon Cult", being the natural evolution of our sound.
The band’s music is quite varied and draws from a plethora of different styles. What would you say have been the most important influences musically and does everyone contribute to the song writing?
(Francesco Bucci - Bass): This time we also worked in a different way, for with the past albums me and Simone were the main songwriters, composing the stuff at home and that taking it to the rehearsal room to show them to the other guys in the band. For "The Gorgon Cult" we decided to work all six together, jamming in the rehearsal room instead of working at home. The result was incredible because everyone was involved in the song writing process, and as you'll agree six minds works better that two. The mood was enthusiastic but also a bit scary, because we never tried to compose and album in that way, and we didn't know how the result would turn out. Now that I hold the album in my hand I can say that I'm totally satisfied by the result, and I think "The Gorgon Cult" is our best album so far.
Who is responsible for the lyrics and where does the inspiration for them come from. Tell us a bit more about them. It seems that some of them are inspired by horror movies or books with titles like ‘Nightbreed’ or ‘Wurdulak’? Also where does the intro to “Wurdulak’ come from – I could be mistaken but is it from Mario Bava’s ‘63 ‘Black Sabbath’ movie which also had a segment entitled ‘The Wurdulak’?
(Francesco Bucci): I'm the one responsible for most of the lyrics since our first album "Supreme Art Of War" (1999), but I never wrote so much like for "The Gorgon Cult". This time I tried to write stuff about more different subjects than in the past. Of course our main inspiration has always been the Greek and Roman mythology and history, and songs like "Dance Of Hecate", "The Gorgon Cult" and "Oath Of The Legion" speak about these topics, but beside these ones there're also new subjects, like in "Under The Boards (195, M.A.)". That one was inspired by the horrible acts of Dennis Nielsen, a serial killer that was active in the early eighties around London and still alive today in some British mental hospital. The lyrics for "Nightbreed" were written by my good friend Damnagoras, the former singer of Elvenking, now active with Leprechaun, a band in which I play the bass. His lyrics are really strange and personal, and they totally fit into such a hypnotic song. Also the title of instrumental track, "Memories Of Lemuria", has a meaning. Lemuria was one of the three lost civilizations, together with Atlantis and Mu. We hope that you all, by listening to this soundtrack-like song, will be taken to the golden shores of Lemuria with your mind. Like you noticed we love to take inspiration from books, movies and poems, as it was for "The Secrets Of The Earth" and "I Am Legend" from our previous albums. The last one was inspired by the Richard Matheson same titled novel, as it is in "the Gorgon Cult" for "Medusa's Coil", inspired by the same titled novel written by H.P. Lovecraft, and Wurdulak. Especially Wurdulak was inspired by the work of Mario Bava, one of the most brilliant horror movie directors of all time. I wrote that lyrics thinking about two movies: the first one is "Black Sabbath" (aka. I Tre Volti Della Paura), the movie that even inspired Ozzy when he needed to find a new name for his band, and the other one is "Black Sunday" (also known as La Maschera Del Demonio). This song is a tribute to one of the finest artist that our country ever produced; his work still influences famous director like Quentin Tarantino and John Carpenter.
By the way you have all my respect for recognizing the intro of the song from just a bunch of seconds, it came exactly from "Black Sabbath", in particular from the segment titled "The Wurdulak" that also features the legendary Boris Karloff!!
Tell us a bit more about the various guest performances on the album. Who did what and how did you get in touch with them?
(Cristaino Borchi): Volgar is the leader of Deviate Damaen, a gothic band from Italy, and he sings the clean vocal parts of Stormlord since "Where My Spirit Forever Shall Be". He's a sort of added member to Stormlord, because it feels so good to work together. He has a really particular kind of voice that you can easily recognize. We never wanted a "standard" voice for our clean parts, and I'm sure we'll continue to work with him even in the future! About Elisabetta, she's a vocal student. Beside this, she's a big friend of us and is into Stormlord and extreme music so much. We were searching for a cool voice from a person that could understand exactly what we wanted, and Elisabetta was the right choice for us. Then we have Giuseppe Orlando, drummer of Novembre and producer of Outer Sound Studios, on "Dance Of Hecate" in some growl parts. This is something born during the recording sessions of the previous "At The Gates Of Utopia", when he sung a part in "...And winter Was". His growls are really terrific (in the good sense of word) and we wanted to get this thing, originally born as a joke, on the new album too! I think Giuseppe did an amazing job on this new album. He played an important role in the final result. We have been good associates in the past, but in the two months we stayed in the studio we became good friends.
Also for your previous album there was a video shot for ‘I Am Legend’ with director Bridiga Costa and with visual effects from David Bracci (who worked with Dario Argento). How do you look back on the video shoot and the overall result? Is there any chance of another video in the future or anything like this?
(Francesco Bucci): I still like that video very much, and I'm not the only one. To our big surprise, the "I Am Legend" video turned out to be one of the most successful things ever done by Stormlord! I have to thank especially my good friend Brigida, the director of that masterpiece. The idea for the video came from us both. Since the beginning of the project we decided that this wasn't bound to be the “usual” and "clean” videoclip, we wanted to do something shocking and brutal. Even the hardest death metal bands never made a video with such graphic violence, where you can really see all the blood, the guts and the gore. The other videos just keep on promising you some kind of frightening, "I Am Legend" gives you the real horror. It was conceived as a tribute to some of the 70's movies directors that we love the most, like the genius George Romero and Lucio Fulci, because they made the real horror movies, not like this modern shit, mainly made of CGI and actors taken from MTV.
Due to the success of this video we'll try to shoot another one for the new album, always involving both Brigida and David Bracci. Together with Brigida we choose the song "Under The Boards (195, M.A.), because it has a scary feeling that fits to the images that we have in our minds. We've to discuss about it with our label, but I think we're going to do it in a short time, and it’ll be much more extreme than the "I Am Legend" video. We want to terrorize your nights, so stay tuned on our website www.stormlord.net for any info about it, as well as to download the "I Am Legend" video.
The video also appears in the multimedia section on the CD, alongside several mp3’s of various side-projects of the band’s different members. Whose idea was it to have a section like this and how important do you consider multimedia and the Internet in general for a band like Stormlord?
(Cristiano): I think Internet is a really good way to promote music, and we strongly believe in it as a band. About the file sharing, people need to hear before they buy, even because there are a lot of low quality products around. We are metal fans as well as Stormlord fans, and we know cd prices are gone really crazy today. That's the main reason that our website provides a song from every album to download, the videoclip is there too as well as some other cool stuff. I think the main problem is that the music industry never gave a real answer to this kind of problems, and it's still hard to find "legal" web places where one can hear a complete song or the album online as in a shop, and nothing changes in cd prices too. Internet could be a great way to make music promotion, but is already seen only as an "enemy" from most part of the labels, and that is sad because it could be the best way to give music fans the opportunity to get more elements possible to deicide how to spend their money. From our side, we consider the multimedia area of the album to be a present for the fans, as well as a perfect solution for these problems. We offer 50 minutes of extra music on it, and I think this can motivate people who like Stormlord music to get an original copy of "The Gorgon Cult".
There is also a cover of the Maiden classic ‘Moonchild’ on ‘The Gorgon Cult’. Whose idea was it to cover this song and why specifically this one?
(Cristiano Borchi): We chose "Moonchild" because we are Iron Maiden fans!! Beside this, I think this song (that's personally one of my favourites from Maiden and the first one I heard in metal) has all the characteristics to be performed in a Stormlord jacket. It has an obscure feel and a really strange structure, even the vocals haven't got a real melody, and are left to the genius interpretation of Bruce Dickinson. I had to rearrange them all, thinking about alternatives like screams and growls, but keeping the original structure and so on was a sort of challenge too for us. The feel of Iron Maiden playing their songs is something really hard to recreate, and often you hear covers of them that are good "in theory", but have lost the magic. We tried to keep the original feel of the song, and insert a bit of our feel into it. A lot of people hearing it say it is the same of the original, but it also seems to be a Stormlord song at the same time, and it's exactly what we wanted! I'm really proud of the final result, as a musician and as Maiden fan!
Apart from the ‘Gods Of Metal’ festival, are there any other live dates or tours planned? What would your ideal touring situation be?
(Cristiano Borchi): My ideal touring situation? Easy, to tour with Iron Maiden, haha!! Well, we have some shows in Italy and Switzerland booked right now, and during the summer we hope to plan the European tour, which most likely will happen in the fall.
Are there any final comments you would like to make or things to say to readers of this interview?
(Cristiano Borchi): We hail cyber users of Lords Of Metal! As told before we want people to have the opportunity to check us out, so we invite you to download the mp3 from our website www.stormlord.net, and if you like majestic extreme metal, give "The Gorgon Cult" a chance: you'll not be disappointed!
http://www.stormlord.net
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