METAL PIT INTERVIEWS
Interview with MOTHERSTONE. Interview by NICK. September 2008.
Greetings brothers and sisters, I am really Psyched to talk about this band
today because they are creating a huge buzz in the European Metal
community, so I figured it was about time the rest of the world caught
up. The band is called Motherstone and they hail from Rome Italy. This
band is unique in alot of ways because as I see it, they have all the
elements in place for total world domination. Their new cd is called
"Biolence" and it really has to be experienced first hand to get the full
effect. Motherstone
was formed in 2003 with original members Ivano, Rik, JJ and Eliana.The following year brought the addition of guitarist Valerio and the release of their first demo called "Just a little Dose". In 2005 after adding guitarist Dani Hell, Valerio decided to move on and left the band. In 2006 the band released "Through the paths of Sanity" which received some very positive reviews. In 2007 the bands original vocalist Eliana left the band and was replaced by the very talented Vale which now put the final piece of the puzzle into place for the direction the band was headed. In the spring of 2008 Motherstone released "Biolence", a Heavy Metal concept cd written about some of the most gruesome crimes in Italy's history. So,without further delay I will let the band themselves explain what it is about their music that makes it so unique.The band is........Dani Hell - Guitars/ Vale - Vocals/ JJ Mammasasso - Vocals/ Ivano - Bass/ Rik Mackey - Drums
was formed in 2003 with original members Ivano, Rik, JJ and Eliana.The following year brought the addition of guitarist Valerio and the release of their first demo called "Just a little Dose". In 2005 after adding guitarist Dani Hell, Valerio decided to move on and left the band. In 2006 the band released "Through the paths of Sanity" which received some very positive reviews. In 2007 the bands original vocalist Eliana left the band and was replaced by the very talented Vale which now put the final piece of the puzzle into place for the direction the band was headed. In the spring of 2008 Motherstone released "Biolence", a Heavy Metal concept cd written about some of the most gruesome crimes in Italy's history. So,without further delay I will let the band themselves explain what it is about their music that makes it so unique.The band is........Dani Hell - Guitars/ Vale - Vocals/ JJ Mammasasso - Vocals/ Ivano - Bass/ Rik Mackey - Drums
METAL PIT: Welcome Motherstone, it is very cool to finally get a chance to speak
with you today.
MOTHERSTONE: Hello Nick, hi everyone, thanks for giving us a chance to virtually cross the Ocean and spread our name, we really appreciate it.
Metal Pit: How did the band come to be?
MOTHERSTONE: The band was born as many many other bands were, at school. Rik, JJ and Ivano were school-mates and shared a huge love for heavy metal, DaniHell and Vale were met later and in different years but if they were chosen, you know, there must be a reason.
Metal Pit: Motherstone is a very unusual name, who came up with it?
MOTHERSTONE: This is not the first time we have been asked this and it always makes us laugh our butts off. To be honest, Motherstone is just a Latin to English translation of JJ's real surname but since Motherstone sounds like a chosen-between-millions name.. we'll say that it was studied and chosen
between a million names.
Metal Pit: After going through a couple lineup changes, when did you realize that all the pieces were finally in place and you really had something special here?
MOTHERSTONE: Well Nick, answering this question is very hard to me, but I'm sure that anyone who's ever been in a band will understand my poor explaination.. Since you start singing or playing an instrument and trying to put a band up, you keep meeting a lot of interesting and very talented people, but to be a band it also means to have common targets, common dreams, to be friends, to have compatible personalities, to bear other members hard moments, to help each other, to understand each other.. It's an endless recipe and all ingredients have to perfectly match each others, otherwise the whole cake will suck. Living in a band with a wrong line-up it means to taste that cake everyday in your rehearsal studio and understand it's not yet what you were looking for. On the contrary, when the line-up is perfect, you'll just understand it within the first 30 seconds of the first song you're playing. That vibe is hard to describe, you just suddenly get to understand all is fine.. that's it.
Metal Pit: Your latest cd "Biolence" in my opinion is pure Genius. When did you decide you wanted to do something so different, like a concept cd?
MOTHERSTONE: Thanks for the "Genius", Nick. The idea of making a concept cd is a perfect example of Motherstone's way to think. There are thousands of heavy metal bands in the world. We don't think we are the best one. We don't think to be the most talented one. We have nothing more and better than many of them. So if we really wanted to live with music, to try to merge and to be noticed, we'd have to do something particular. How many bands have made a 65 minutes concept album as their first full-length
release? We knew it could be dangerous, but we just tried, we didn't have much to lose.
MOTHERSTONE: Hello Nick, hi everyone, thanks for giving us a chance to virtually cross the Ocean and spread our name, we really appreciate it.
Metal Pit: How did the band come to be?
MOTHERSTONE: The band was born as many many other bands were, at school. Rik, JJ and Ivano were school-mates and shared a huge love for heavy metal, DaniHell and Vale were met later and in different years but if they were chosen, you know, there must be a reason.
Metal Pit: Motherstone is a very unusual name, who came up with it?
MOTHERSTONE: This is not the first time we have been asked this and it always makes us laugh our butts off. To be honest, Motherstone is just a Latin to English translation of JJ's real surname but since Motherstone sounds like a chosen-between-millions name.. we'll say that it was studied and chosen
between a million names.
Metal Pit: After going through a couple lineup changes, when did you realize that all the pieces were finally in place and you really had something special here?
MOTHERSTONE: Well Nick, answering this question is very hard to me, but I'm sure that anyone who's ever been in a band will understand my poor explaination.. Since you start singing or playing an instrument and trying to put a band up, you keep meeting a lot of interesting and very talented people, but to be a band it also means to have common targets, common dreams, to be friends, to have compatible personalities, to bear other members hard moments, to help each other, to understand each other.. It's an endless recipe and all ingredients have to perfectly match each others, otherwise the whole cake will suck. Living in a band with a wrong line-up it means to taste that cake everyday in your rehearsal studio and understand it's not yet what you were looking for. On the contrary, when the line-up is perfect, you'll just understand it within the first 30 seconds of the first song you're playing. That vibe is hard to describe, you just suddenly get to understand all is fine.. that's it.
Metal Pit: Your latest cd "Biolence" in my opinion is pure Genius. When did you decide you wanted to do something so different, like a concept cd?
MOTHERSTONE: Thanks for the "Genius", Nick. The idea of making a concept cd is a perfect example of Motherstone's way to think. There are thousands of heavy metal bands in the world. We don't think we are the best one. We don't think to be the most talented one. We have nothing more and better than many of them. So if we really wanted to live with music, to try to merge and to be noticed, we'd have to do something particular. How many bands have made a 65 minutes concept album as their first full-length
release? We knew it could be dangerous, but we just tried, we didn't have much to lose.
Metal Pit: Sometimes doing an entire cd as a "concept" can be risky, how did you come up with the idea of writing about famous crimes in Italy and why do you think you have had such a huge positive response to the cd?
MOTHERSTONE: Well, our previous release was an EP whose intent was to explore interior fears and insanities. This time we wanted to warn people about what these insanities might lead to if no one takes care of them. It's like a second chapter about this "study", a way to tell people: hey, don't ignore your friends, your family, your co-workers and their problems; try to listen and help, don't turn your head away, don't hang up the phone and stuff like this might be avoided. We started looking for stories and
unfortunately we found too many of them. So we just decided to link our songs to some of the Italian worst crime stories. But also in this case, unfortunately, they were many many more than thirteen.
Metal Pit: I was unaware of some of the history of these crimes In Italy, but I read up on some of your subject matter on the cd and it is quite fascinating reading? Is someone in the band a real history buff?
MOTHERSTONE: Unfortunately all the crimes we talked about are very well known in Italy. Some are kind of recent, some others from the 70's became sad pages of Italy's history and almost everyone knows them. All of them are very very sad. The idea was to make a very cold narrations of the facts and link it to cold but emotional music, we thought people would get more involved about it and have a deeper approach to what happened around them. When JJ started the search of newspapers articles, comments and books, he found enough material to write a whole book collection. So we picked something up and mixed it with a third eye vision.
Metal Pit: I quite honestly love this entire cd but I guess I do have a few favorites based on the lyrics and subject matter. "Nowadays Juliet","Bloody Mary" and "Slaughter Machine" are just a few of the ones that come to mind. Can you tell us a little about these songs?
MOTHERSTONE: "Slaughter Machine" is about the massacre that took place in Erba, a small town in northern Italy a couple years ago. Husband and wife were bothered by some noises coming from their neighbours, went downstairs, killed them all, and set their flat on fire. After that, they went for dinner at MacDonald's and pretended huge astonishment when they found police, ambulances and firefighters working in their building. In the end of the
song we wanted to add the murderer's real voice giving a confession to the police some weeks later. The coldness of his voice telling about those stabs, about how he cut a 2 years old baby throat, and set it all on fire, is a perfect example of insanity. They were caught because one of the neighbours survived and recognized them."Bloody Mary" is about what happened in Cogne, northern Italy again, where a mother, Anna Maria Franzoni, has killed her 3 years old son Samuele, hitting and destroying his head with a never found object. She always said to be innocent and never confessed the murder, but everything leads to her as the murderer and she'll spend years and years in jail as the judges has decided. Once, at the end of a TV interview during which she told about her pain, her loss, her sorrow, as soon as questions where over, she turned her face to the interviewer, suddenly stopped crying and asked: "did I cry too much?". "Bloody Mary" is Biolence's second track, and in the end of the first one you can listen to the real phone call she made to the emergency."Nowadays Juliet" is maybe the worst story we've heard about. In 1975 two girls were invited by three wealthy guys to a party in a small town on the coast south of Rome. There wasn't any party in that house and those three animals kept the two girls in cage a couple days humiliating them, raping them, hitting them, punching them, peeing on them, and doing them all the worst possible tortures. One of the girls died and the animals stopped beating her. So the other girl, Donatella, understood that she had to pretend to die to have some chances to have her life saved, as Shakespeare's Juliet pretended to die to avoid an unwanted future. The three guys put the corpses in the back of a car and abandoned it on a street in Rome. Donatella was found some hours later because of her own screams. This event signed her life forever and led her to death for cancer some years ago. One of the three animals quickly left Italy, another one pretended to die and the third one was arrested and stayed in jail 'till he had a chance to work outside the prison, 30 years later, and in that occasion, he killed again two women. If you google "Donatella Colasanti", one one of the first appearing images it's the picture a photographer shot
when a cop took her out of that car in 1975..
Metal Pit: What are some of the band's favorite songs?
MOTHERSTONE: If you mean what songs of Biolence WE prefer.. well, we have to say that we've been working two long years on them and we are really connected in a special way to all of them. But, if we really have to pick some, we'd probably say "Someone Sitting By You" or "Russian Roulette" because of the emotions they give us, or "Pictures Of My Agony" or "I Am The Alpha And The Omega" for the adrenaline we feel playing them on stage.If, on the contrary, you meant what songs of Biolence we've been told
PEOPLE prefer, we have got very positive feedbacks on "Someone Sitting By You", "Russian Roulette" and "I Am The Alpha And The Omega" above all.
Metal Pit: The band has another unique element with this cd in that the Power of the music matches the Power and Brutality of the lyrics, was that something you tried to achieve or did it just come naturally?
MOTHERSTONE: As I was saying before, we wanted the audience to face how sad and brutal the crimes we talked about have been. We knew there was a chance that people may point us as anti-christ jackals or bullshit like that, but fortunately it never happened. It means that people got our message: these crimes are the result of our society and of our lifestyle, they can't exist, let's stop it all.
Metal Pit: You have also managed to write heavy songs but keep melody as well, how are you able to pull that off because a lot of bands cant?
MOTHERSTONE: This is our trademark and our biggest amount of work as well. Other great metal bands like Metallica or some Pantera, Tool, Opeth
and so on showed us already that you can make a good metal even with easy listening melodies every now and then. Our musical background, our
influences, our favourite music... they are very heavy and it requires a
lot of work for us to try and calm down our groovy metal instinct and mix it
with easy melodies, even to focus the audience's attention on the wonderful
voice of Vale. Then we can't forget that european music, expecially the
italian one, is very very melodic, and for sure we have something in our
DNAs that let us be able to compose nice melodies too.
Metal Pit: Who are some of the band's musical influences?
MOTHERSTONE: Well, even if we think and can proudly say that we aren't clones of any existing band, you can probably find out our influences listening to our music. When in our songs you notice a thrash metal riff it's because some of us love Metallica and Pantera, when you notice a progressive running it's because some of us love Opeth and Dream Theater, when you notice a death metal sound it's because some of us love Death and In Flames, when you notice a nice melody it's because some of us love blues or rock music.
Metal Pit: I am sure at times it can be difficult translating lyrics from Italian to English but you did a remarkable job on this cd.Who writesthe lyrics for the band?
MOTHERSTONE: In this case JJ made most of the writing work for 12 of the thirteen songs in Biolence. "Russian Roulette" was written by DaniHell. All translations were made by DaniHell on night-times after work.. For this reason and because of some weird recording timings, our translation work is just "remarkable".
Metal Pit: This band is also very unique in the fact that you have two vocalists,how did you decide on that?
MOTHERSTONE: Aw well, Nick, this is another trademark of ours. Even if we are not the one band with a male and a female vocalist, maybe we are the ones in death metal. Motherstone project was born with this kind of line-up and will die with this kind of line-up.
Metal Pit: Vale and JJ seem to have a very good chemistry together with sharing the vocals. Is that something that just clicked right away?
MOTHERSTONE: It is part of the project. We always looked for this kind of chemistry, and we really like it. Two opposite kind of voices complete each other.
Metal Pit: You replaced your former vocalist Elaina with Vale in 2007. I mean no disrepect to Elaina,but Vale is an Amazing singer,howdid the band find her and does she have any professional voice training?
MOTHERSTONE: The split with Elaina left us without a female vocalist just
six months before the scheduled recording sessions. We have spent very hard months casting and trying to keep working on the album at the same time. We have had very bad experiences between Eliana and Vale. Until one day DaniHell went to a open air festival in the suburbs of Rome where he could notice this girl singing covers on stage with a rock band. A couple of days later she was with us and ten days later we introduced her to the audience with a special concert. Vale didn't have any professional voice trading, she's just a natural miracle
Metal Pit: The Italian Metal scene with bands like yourself, Cadaveria and Nibelheim seems to be hot as Hell right now, can you explain why?
MOTHERSTONE: The Italian metal scene is as rich of talent as poor in
producers. Major labels make famous Italian artists release an album
spending more than 300.000 Euros for recording sessions only, but they
don't even bet 5.000 on an underground band. Many very talented bands quit
playing metal music for this reason in the years, and many other will in the future. Italian musicians have good talents, it's something traditional, music is in our blood.. just think about Classic music.. Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Paganini, Donizetti, Mascagni.. where are they from? We're just waiting someone to notice it.
Metal Pit: Have you had the opportunity to play any live shows outside of Italy?
MOTHERSTONE: We had the chance in the past but we didn't get it because of financial problems. Venues don't pay enough to justify a small tour. And long tours are hard to set up because all of us have a job to pay bills. But right now we are working to define a collaboration with a big booking agency that will probably allow us to travel around Europe sometime in the next months.
Metal Pit: How about any tours in the near future? Will you be able to make it over to the U.S. or Canada in the coming year?
MOTHERSTONE: We'd love to, also because we think that our music would fit american ears perfectly. And because we are sure that in U.S. there's still someone ready to bet on music outside mainstream. It would be a dream for us, you never know what can happen, but more rationally we'll have to wait another release, so a couple of years... unless we decide to produce a tour by ourselves..
Metal Pit: In your live show are you playing just the songs from "Biolence" to continue the concept theme, or are you including some of your earlier music as well?
MOTHERSTONE: Most of the tracklist is usally made of Biolence, but we always include at least a song from previous releases and one cover song.
Metal Pit: You have two previous recordings with the demo " Just a little Dose" and the cd "Through the paths of Insanity", how has the band matured as musicians since those years?
MOTHERSTONE: A lot, Nick. I would really consider "Just a Little Dose" an early experiment of making something nu metal.. When DaniHell joined the band, Motherstone got a more thrash/death metal input. Just a few months later we decided to release the EP "Throuth The Paths Of Insanity" to set a new starting point and work hard to reach our aims.
Metal Pit: How can potential new fans find out about your music?
MOTHERSTONE: Through the usual channels.. Visiting our website www.motherstone.it or our MySpace page www.myspace.com/motherstonemusic or on music portals like iTunes, CdBaby.com and so on.. just google Motherstone to find a lot of stuff.
Metal Pit: The band's latest video is for the song "Someone sitting by you", I think the video itself and the song are tied together brilliantly, can you explain the connection for us?
MOTHERSTONE: "Someone Sitting By You" is our first video on rotation on
musical channels on Italian TVs so we decided to make a sort of promotional videoclip. No parallel stories, nothing about the subjects of the song...
just us, just Motherstone, to show who we are, what we do, what music we
play. And there was no better place to shoot a video for a band called
Motherstone than a marble cave. We get out of the cave, get in the middle
of the scene, play our music, so powerful to make a wall crash down and go
away.. if you like us, you know out to find us.
Metal Pit: How was the experience of the shooting the video,was it fun to make?
MOTHERSTONE: It was tiring but very fun. We chose to work with
professional crews, professional director, professional staff and
professional tools to get a professional result. Everything was
professional but we had a lot of fun too. We're friends to each other,
Nick, every moment all together is fun. Then, when shooting sessions were
over, everyone in the water to get some cool. That day, May 4th, there
were like 30 °C in the air, we were in a cave 40 meters under sea level,
surrounded by white walls.. sun and heat was bouncing all towards us... so
damn hot but so much fun.
Metal Pit: Any plans for any live videos from the band?
MOTHERSTONE: It's our will to record and release on the internet some live shows, we're just waiting to play in a venue that allows nice shootings and
a good audio quality.
Metal Pit: What is it that you think separates MOTHERSTONE from a lof of the other Metal bands out there?
MOTHERSTONE: For sure we put something different and original forward. But I wouldn't like to talk about what separates us from other bands. I prefer to talk about what we have in common with them: a lot of passion, skills, talent, and acceptance to sacrifices. We hope the best for all the band who sweat and bleed for their own music!
Metal Pit: Are there elements about this business that piss you off at times?
MOTHERSTONE: Hey Nick! Whether you're blind or you just want us to describe how the music business sucks. Can't you see that 90% of mainstream music is poor crap for dumb people? Can't you hear all songs sound the same? Can't you see always the same 20-30 "artists" on the major medias? They prefer to pick 4-5 teen boys, write songs for them, spend 2 years teaching them how to play those songs and make money on idiot teenagers who cry and shout beside the runways of these boy bands. There is no respect for people who really give their life for music. Not only Metal....I'm talking about all those genres that are not mainstream..........Jazz, Blues and so on. Whether people don't want to hear real music or they're really dumb.
Metal Pit: Is there anything that the band would like to say to existing fans and to potential new fans?
MOTHERSTONE: We want to thank anyone who tried to listen to our music at least once. You make like it or not, but at least you gave us a chance. And so far all feedback has been great. So more people will get in touch with us, more friends/fans we'll have. In the hope to see all you guys headbanging in front of our stages.
Metal Pit: It has been a real pleasure talking with the band and getting to know you a little better. I think you should all be very proud of what you have created with "Biolence" and I expect big things in the coming months from you. I wish you all the best of luck and want to thank you for spending time with us today.
MOTHERSTONE: Thank you Nick. That you and everyone for everything.
MOTHERSTONE WEBSITE
MOTHERSTONE MYSPACE
