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Interview
Deutsche VersionInterview mit Scelerata (24.04.2007)
HH: Hi! How are you?
Francis: Everything is great, and it's a huge pleasure to be here talking to Heavyhardes fans.
HH: How are the reactions for your debut record Darkness And Light up to now?
Francis: To be completely honest, we are very surprised! Of course we wanted to do a great album and be able to release it worldwide, but we are amazed that all this is already happening for us in our first album. It has been released in every continent, except in Africa. We've been getting amazing reviews, interviews in magazines such as the japanese Young Guitar and Burrn and Brazilian's Rock Brigade. Here in Brazil people have chosen Darkness & Light as the third best Brazilian album in 2006, right behind Sepultura and Angra. So all these special things motivate us to keep on rockin' and writing songs that just pleases us very much.
HH: How long did it take to do the song-writing?
Francis: The composing process began when we put the band together, I'm talking about 2001 here. But it took a while, because we didn't have any perspective for recording anything at the time. But in late 2004, when we knew we were ready for recording an album, we started doing demos and stuff. In April 2005 we began recording in São Paulo the drum tracks. In May we had everything recorded, and the mix was done in July, I believe. Some interesting things about the album are the appearance of Angra's singer, Edu Falaschi in the track "The Spell of Time" and two amazing accordion solos by an outstanding local artist named Renato Borghetti in the track "Endless". We mastered the album in December 2005 with Dennis Ward, and released it in Brazil and Asia in October 2006. And, of course, we are so happy and pleased about the release in Europe and Australia by MTM Music/SPV and in North America by Nightmare Records in this year of 2007.
HH: Who is responsible for the song-writing?
Francis: The boys from the strings are the main song-writers, but the songs are full with ideas from all five of us.
HH: I think not everyone knows about you, could you please tell us something more about the band history?
Francis: The band began when Gustavo Strapazon (bass) and Bruno Sandri (guitar), who were friends since a very young age, invited me to a jam session. They were looking for a drummer to start a heavy metal band. Quickly we hit it off, and we became very good friends. This was around October of the year 2000. And in 2001 Carl Casagrande (vocals) and Rodrigo Velasco (guitar) joined the band. We did lots of gigs, recorded some demo stuff, and in December of 2004, Rod was replaced by Magnus Wichmann (guitar). Since then we have the same line-up, and hopefully it will never change!
HH: What's the idea behind your band name? Is it based on the latin expression Castra Scelerata or is it anything else?
Francis: When we started looking for a name for the band, we knew we wanted something different and that would step aside from the cliches. Rod Velasco, our ex-guitarist came up with this name, and we liked it instantly. In portuguese, the word's phonetic suggests speed, accelerated, fast. Summing it up with it's real latin meaning (criminal, bad guy), we knew we had a heavy metal name for a heavy metal band.
HH: Can you please explain the meaning of the record title?
Francis: Everybody goes through very hard times and extremely pleasant and happy moments. That's what we thought when we came up with the title. And the phoenix in the cover artwork is a good symbol for that. I mean, the phoenix arised from the ashes to live forever. "The dark will find the light".
HH: Who came up with the idea for the cover artwork?
Francis: We called a great artist from São Paulo to do the artwork for our first album. Rodrigo Cruz is his name, and we knew his work with artists such as Shaaman, Kotipelto and some other bands from Brazil. For the cover we wanted something dark and with a symbol, something that we could use on future albums, kind of like Iron Maiden's Eddie, in a smaller scale, of course! Rodrigo came up with the idea of a petrified phoenix bird with fire. When he showed us the final art, we just loved it, because the phoenix has a lot to do with the title of the album Darkness & Light.
HH: What are you songs about? Could you please tell us something about each song?
Francis: Each song is interesting in it's own way. For example, "Holyfire" has a great chorus and guitar duells. "Eminence" is almost like the whole song is a chorus, people can just sing along the entire song. "The Spell of Time" has the acoustic guitar played in a classical way, a great chorus and a very special appearance of Angra's singer Edu Falaschi. "Ethereal Places" has an amazing bass guitar riff and makes every metal lover wants to bang his head. "Endless" is a very unique kind of metal with its acoustic guitars and accordian solos. "Darkness & Light" is the "slow song" of the album, even though it has very heavy parts. "Spirits Looking For..." is a long song, one of the "prog metal" songs of the album, with some very heavy guitar riffs. "Wings to Fly" is our Power Metal track. And finally the eight minute epic "Adonai", the longest of all, is about the religious tension in the middle-east, and has amazing guitar riffs and very nice drum passages.
HH: What are your musical influences? Do you have any idols?
Francis: Each one of us has their favorite bands and artists, and all of that appear on the album. But in general, I believe artists such as Helloween, Angra, Malmsteen, Iron Maiden and Dream Theater can help people understand what our music is about.
HH: Are you full-time musicians? Or do you have a fix job?
Francis: Actually I'm the only member that has a fix job. I'm an architect and run my own company. The other four spend their time dealing with music as producers, song writers and musicians.
HH: What about your plans for the future? What do you want to reach with the band?
Francis: We trust our ability as a band very much. We believe that there is still so much to be done, and I'm talking about song writing, albums, gigs, tour, etc. The road is very long, with lots of hard times to go through yet, but are willing to face everything and keep on doing the music that we love. We believe in our talents, the way we face the music industry and our song writing.
HH: Thanks a lot for the interview! Do you finally want to say something?
Francis: It's been a pleasure, and we'll be always ready of you! We are very excited about releasing our first album in Europe. We've already received some great reviews in magazines and web sites that made us very happy. Hopefully very soon we'll be able to do an European tour so people can also see us live. My final message is: trust Brazilian Heavy Metal, because it is a very strong scene, and has great bands.
Andi