Rockezine.com interview with Mesmerize on Jul 05, 2005

with Piero Paravidino on Jul 05, 2005


		Your third full length record “Stainless” will be released next week. How does “Stainless” compare to its predecessor, “Off The Beaten Path” and what can the fan expect to hear? In my opinion Stainless is a very big step forward when compared to “Off The Beaten Path”. It shows the evolution that there’s been in our sound and songwriting. I’m convinced we have found a more personal style, with each song being very different from each other; every each one is able to strike you at once but also to keep you interested for a long period of time. We worked a lot for instance on the vocal lines, which are melodic and catchy but never easy or “cheap”, and on the arrangements, which are rich of tiny details intertwined with a very strong wall of sound. Last, but not the least, the production is much better, this time we attained a very powerful sound, modern and clear; even this has required a good deal of work, this meaning also re-mixing some tracks we weren’t fully satisfied with!
		What are your expectations concerning the album, and are you satisfied with the way it turned out? I can tell you that we are fully satisfied, there’s almost nothing I would retouch, and you probably know this is a very rare thing! We are very confident about the album because we’re convinced we’ve done a damn good job! It can surely meet our fans’ expectations, but also gain us some new followers. The main problem is to convince people to give us a try, because with so many bands and cds, it’s becoming more and more difficult to reach new audiences… I hope this interview can help! I invite everyone to listen to the samples on our site www.mesmerize.it.
		How would you describe your music to a person who has never ever heard of Mesmerize? I’d describe it as fucking good Heavy Metal! I know this is quite a broad definition, but I don’t think we fall in any subcategory, as it seems to be the rule nowadays… many bands seem to choose a “label”, like “melodic death” or “symphonic power speed” and stick to it in all of their songs. We are surely classic metal-oriented, but the variety of different influences makes our sound turn different in every song or even in the same song, so that we have speed moments, folk passages, rocky mid-tempos, epic parts, even some prog or thrash touches!
		It took about three years since the release of “Off The Beaten Path”, what have you been up to those three long years? After the period of promotion for “Off The Beaten Path”, we started to lay down the basics for the new songs, but then, in 2003, we had to face a line-up change, because our former guitarist Paolo Chiodini moved with his new family to another distant town. This was a bit “traumatic” for us, as we’ve always been a very stable formation; luckily enough, we found a new member, Luca Belbruno, who’s both a skilled guitarist and a good friend, which is very important to us; it took a little bit to teach him all the new songs and to involve him in the final definition of arrangements. In the meantime, our drummer Andrea Garavaglia had finished setting up his new personal recording studio. So, by the beginning of 2004 all was ready to start the preproduction for “Stainless” and to work again on the details of every song. We recorded the album from July through November, it was mastered in January and here we are today! It may seem a long period but take into account that our regular jobs and our families require a lot of time for their own!
"I’ve often noticed some prejudice towards Italian bands, especially from much of the German media."		How difficult is it to get any recognition inside, as well as outside, Italy as a heavy metal act and how much do you think the success of a band like Rhapsody has influenced the Italian scene in general? It’s always been very difficult and it’s becoming more and more like that as the time passes. In Italy, magazines and websites give a pretty good space to Italian bands, so this aspect is covered, but it’s very hard to find good places to play live and also to have people coming to your gigs! Probably most Italian kids are a bit lazy and don’t care much about supporting their national bands! Abroad, you may understand it’s even more difficult! It’s almost impossible to get to play live, because of the cost if nothing else, and you have very little space and credit. I’ve often noticed some prejudice towards Italian bands, especially from much of the German media, which cut your wings even before they listen to your cd… Rhapsody had the great merit to take Italy to the attention of the metal audience worldwide, and they were the main among the bands that pushed the renaissance of metal in Italy towards the end of the 90s; unfortunately a cliché was also born that every Italian metal band would wanted to sound like them, which is absolutely not true! In effect, there are very few bands like them, and the most famous Italian bands, I’m thinking about Labÿrinth, Domine, Vision Divine, Lacuna Coil, are distinctly different from them!
		What bands have influenced Mesmerize the most? Our musical roots are in classic metal, that’s true, so bands like Iron Maiden, Manowar and Helloween have had a big influence on us, but I think it’s easy to acknowledge that in our sound there’s something more than that; I think our music is not bound by strict limits, but receives input from all the bands we’ve listened to and loved in all these years. So you will find a good deal of power speed influenced by German bands like Gamma Ray or Blind Guardian, for instance; the violin parts are undoubtedly inspired by my love for Skyclad, but I think we have incorporated them well into our sound, in a way inspired, but not copied from them. Some heavier passages were probably influenced by bands like Nevermore, or Angel Dust, some melodic or symphonic parts from Angra; there’s also a good acoustic guitar work whose inspiration I can trace to Blackmore’s Night.
		The cover artwork is rather sober; is there a particular reason for this? Yes, it was a predetermined choice; we had beautiful fantasy inspired covers in the past, but they were becoming too much of a cliché, combine this with coming from Italy and guess what most people would think even before listening to you! But, besides this, we wanted both to have an immediate and very strong visual image which coped with the music and also to remark the evolution in our sound.
"I think our music is not bound by strict limits, but receives input from all the bands we’ve listened to and loved in all these years."		I really like the production of the album, the crystal clear sound. I guess you must be pretty satisfied with Giovanni Spinotti and will you work with him in the future? Yes, absolutely! He has most of the merit for how the sound turned out and we are very satisfied with his work! He’s a very skilled sound engineer with a lot of experience, also in the USA; we had noticed his work on the self-titled Labÿrinth album so we met him and found a very nice person with whom we knew we could work very well. Another reason for the good production is also the fact that we could work in our drummer Andrea’s new Octopussy Studios, with no strict time schedule, so we could take the time we needed to experiment different sounds to attain what satisfied us perfectly; besides, we could work in a relaxed way and we had the chance to re-do some parts when we weren’t happy with them.
		Speaking of the future; what are your plans and goals for the upcoming years? In the near future our plans involve trying to play live as much as possible to promote Stainless and to make our name circulate the most; then we want to start writing new songs soon to record a new cd with a shorter interval than the last one! Speaking of goals, the main one has always been to have fun by playing music with great friends, and this will always be; beside that, we hope to gain a wider following and be able to bring our music further and further.
		Will we see Mesmerize on tour throughout Europe this summer? Not this summer, unfortunately: it’s very difficult for Italian bands to cross the national borders to play abroad, also because there are no promotional structures that can support you and book concerts there. We had the promo cds in May, which is too late for most European festivals, which have already closed their bill; from September on, we will try our hardest to be featured in some of them next summer!
		At the moment what is your favorite album and why? I may seem a bit presumptuous, but I have to say it’s… “Stainless” !!! I’m not saying this for promotion, I’m sincere: probably it was made to our tastes at such a point that I like it very very much and often find myself slipping it into the cd player and loving to hear it again!
		What Italian metal act do you appreciate the most? Oh, I can’t tell just one! Domine are great for their power and energy, Vision Divine for their class and technique, Elvenking for their folk elements, Rain for their great live impact…
		Thanks a lot for your time and the interview and I wish you all the best with the release of “Stainless”! Is there anything left unsaid? Thanks to you for giving us the chance to make us known there in The Netherlands (and also for the very good review!) and to all the readers who had the patience to follow until here! Please again, give us a try and visit our website www.mesmerize.it ! Stay metal and… RUST WHEN YOU’RE DEAD!!!
		(Frank van de Voorde)