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Interview
Deutsche VersionInterview mit Infernal Poetry (27.06.2009)
Answers by Alessandro Vagnoni (drums) & Daniele (guitar)
HH: Hi there Ladies, how are you doin'?
Alessandro: We're doin' bad. But it could be worse!
Daniele: We're fine. But it could be better!
HH: You just released your new longplayer Nervous System Failure and it is killer, at least for me. How do you think about it after the release?
Alessandro: We're very proud of it. After finishing mixing and post-producing phases and listening to the songs a million times ('cause we followed meticulously each step of the composing and recording process), we felt very satisfied about the final result. Through all these years we were looking for a personal musical form that would satisfy our manifold needs, both mental or linked to the physical aspect of heavy music in general. We want to be stimulated and stimulate who listens to us, permitting him to imagine new musical horizons or simply to let creep into his mind doubts about their existence. Moreover this album has a particular sound, different from the majority of stereotyped productions that saturate the music market at present. This is a relevant aspect of Nervous System Failure worth.
Daniele: I subscribe.
HH: Did you already receive reactions from fans and/or the press concerning the album and if so: What where they like?
Alessandro: Up to now we can say that the tendency of reviewers is to completely love or hate it. We're receiving very good feedbacks from European webzines and magazines but we also have to swallow some shit coming out from some humour-less idiots who took offence at our intro "User Advisory" (a sort of ironic warning about the unconventional musical matter which our platter contains) and, annoyed, discredited the whole work defining us "a bunch of self-gratifying cocks" and wondering "why they bothered releasing their music, rather than just using it for masturbatory material"... I was sure that English people had more sense of humour!
Daniele: This is definitely a "love or hate" album. Complex, sure, but with a lot of juice within. Better get a lot of 8/9/10 in many reviews with some meaningless 3/10 from some 15 years old writers, than getting 7/10 everywhere... We hate "the average".
HH: The band came into existence about 12 years ago and since then has released a couple of CDs. How do you rank the actual album in your discography?
Alessandro: Well that's not correct... We have released three full-length albums (Not Light But Rather Visible Darkness in 2001, Beholding The Unpure in 2005 - re-issued in 2007 - and now Nervous System Failure), plus a split CD with Dark Lunacy (Twice, released in 2003) and an EP called Nervous System Checking in 2007, a sort of limited edition containing four songs included in Nervous System Failure, but recorded in a different way. It was kind of an appetizer to pave the way for this album but we've been forced to lose almost two years cause of labels' unfair proposals. I rank this album as the best done in our career. It's not always true that the latest is the best automatically, but we are struggling day by day to make a step beyond on each release.
Daniele: the most creative, unusual, hysterical... and still has a great hook and groove. By the way, did you notice that in each song we have even a chorus?
HH: The sound of your band successfully resists to be pressed into a certain schema. How important is this unique feature for you?
Alessandro: Yes, our album is hard to catalogue for what concerns both composition and sound. We are lucky to benefit from the same studio recording where our singer Paolo Ojetti works as sound-engineer. So we've had a complete control on tone experimentations and sound development. Nevertheless we didn't work in studio in a steady way: sometimes we were forced to wait entire weeks or months to get the studio free. But perhaps this waiting and having time to reflect on what we were doing has made possible for us to make the right choices or discard what was not acceptable or pointless, a constant quality control. I would like to say clearly that our effort is not to reach an unclassifiable form of music at any cost, simply it comes out from the alchemy among us when putting all our ideas in a sole direction.
Daniele: This is not the goal, it's the means.
HH: I wouldn't go as far as to describe the CD as "funny", weird or grotesque would be better descriptions, but nevertheless it seems to be made with a lot of tongue-in-cheek attitude. Am I completely wrong or didn't you have a lot of fun creating that album?
Alessandro: Absolutely! As for the music which is multi-layer, our lyric world is structured in many sense directions. We like to enjoy ourselves when playing and we don't like to take ourselves too serious. We certainly want to talk about serious things: relationship troubles, human condition of living, mental diseases fuelled by absurd social and religious rules and so on... But I think the best way to convey our message sometimes is to make it dense of irony and double-meanings.
Daniele: Grotesque is a very fitting word. I start thinking "grotesque" from the very beginning, when I write something with my guitar. And so do the others musicians in our band. And even if I'm a guitar player, I often work on vocals (lyrics and melodies) and I'm always there in studio to direct Paolo in his "acting" attitude. That's an important point to stress: to reach this "grotesque" attitude, everything must be conceived in a particular manner, and nobody taught us how to do it. We learnt it by ourselves having fun in the studio... the turning point was during the recording sessions of our album Beholding The Unpure, where we discovered this new approach: drink, have fun, drink, make it on your own, drink, have fun and cross your fingers!
HH: This kind of music surely does not have much mass appeal. Don't you set yourself a very strict limit concerning the acceptance of a greater audience or do you think you will create your own small niche with a manageable amount of loyal Fans?
Alessandro: Paradoxically I think that our music is very accessible and potentially marketable. After all, if you analyze our songs you will find in many cases the typical structure of a rock song, with pre-chorus and chorus, specials and bridges. You can distinguish each track from another one, you can feel the particular "hook" of a song. The truth is that labels prefer not to support out-of-schemes music, going on to invest money on clones without personality. They prefer to follow and exploit a trend instead of creating a new one.
Daniele: There are many bands much more complex than us. Just think of math-core scene, so I can't see this problem... or maybe the problem exists because we are not from USA and average-listener doesn't trust in Italian unconventional bands. But the real problem is that people (the mass) lost their listening-capability... the 95% of metal production is standardized on simple structures, flat arrangements, risk-free solutions... in this fucking Myspace band era, everybody has some music to offer, everybody wants to be heard, but... who's listening?
HH: Is it necessary to be in some kind of strange mood to write and play tracks like yours or is it possible to do that in a so-called "normal" mental condition?
Daniele: Of course, the truth is that our nervous system has failed many years ago!
HH: Nervous System Failure is your first album for Copro/Casket Records. Is it a great difference in comparison to the older CDs?
Alessandro: The most relevant thing is that now we have a bigger presence in shops and in the label network of magazines, in and out the web. For the rest it's always the same struggling to manage tours by ourselves, to manage extra promotion and so on... We are undeceived enough about this and we've always done everything by ourselves with good results.
Daniele: As we say on the first track of the CD..."Same old story, same old situation..."
HH: What are your plans for the near future? Do you plan touring and how are the chances for the German or better the Bavarian audience to see you live in 2009 or 2010?
Alessandro: We are currently working on new material for the next album. We are developing what we have reached with Nervous System Failure, a new way to compose by images: how could I describe rhythmically "the clumsy movement of a fat psychopath"? For what concerns tours and live activities, we are arranging for short but frequent mini-tours here in Italy. In foreign countries we would like to share the stage with bands with a comparable musical attitude and with a good audience too.
We have already played in Munich (Titanic City) during our tour with Dismember in 2006 and surely we want to come back. To play live is vital for two reasons: one is that we need to kick assess on a stage; the other is that an underground band like us needs to sell its CDs and merchandise stuff at shows, just to recover and re-invest money to go on producing recordings, paying rehearsal room rents, maintaining the instrumentation... So it's necessary to humanely and materially exist.
Daniele: Hey Michael, why don't you arrange a gig in Munich for us? (Because we're not a booking agency or a concert presenter - Kara)
HH: If you would compare Metal Bands with drugs, what would be the according drug for Infernal Poetry?
Alessandro: Red Wine.
Daniele: Magic Mushrooms. You have the key, ou can stay or go. It's up to you.
HH: Well, then it's time to thank you for your time, to whish you best of success and to hope you to stay that weird and entertaining.
Alessandro: We really appreciate your interest in our music and thank you for this chance to spread the word in Germany. We want to tell our supporters: buy or CDs directly from us (write to infernalpoetry@infernalpoetry.com or go to www.myspace.com/infernalpoetry). You will enjoy a wonderful artwork and allow us to keep on making music.
Daniele: Stay Nervous!
Hannes