Interview Domine

 

"Ancient Spirit Rising" is Domine’s fifth album, it has just been released and we are very happy about it. In Italy has charted at nr.73 and we got 5 albums of the month and 3 cover stories. It took a lot of work to write, rehearse, arrange and record it. When we started to write and rehearse the songs for the album, we wanted to record the album we would like to buy and listen to, with no limit and no genre barriers. We also wanted to improve our music, to broad our style a little bit, which is something we have done with every album and not to do the same album over and over. "Ancient Spirit Rising" is an HEAVY METAL album, because that’s what we can do best, but we filled it with many other things we love and we wanted to explore. That’s why you can find some elements of Hard Rock, Progressive Rock, Celtic And Acoustic Music, Classic Music, a general 70’s feel and even some adult Pop Rock. We are promoting the album now and we are very excited about it. We hope the Metal fans out there will love it too.

I do all the dirty job ! But of course, it’s just the beginning of the writing process. I bring the basic tracks and melodies of the songs and the whole band works on them. In the end it’s really a band effort and I think it shows. This line-up is together since 1999 and it wouldn’t if some one would not be satisfied.

This album took a lot of work. We started to write and rehearse properly in September 2005 and we worked very hard until March 2006. I usually work alone in my house and record very rough demos, with a rhythm and all the melodies done with guitars. Then I bring the demos to the other guys and everybody starts to throw ideas in. At the same time, I work with singer Morby to put down all the vocal lines and then lyrics. When a song is pretty much set up, we start to rehearse it in our place and record various versions. We change things up and improve the songs until we are happy with the result.

When we enter the studio, we are very focused on the songs but we also experiment with arrangements and sounds. We recorded the album in a full month and if you think how many tracks and instruments are on the album, it’s not that much. In some songs on the album there are around 50 tracks of stuff. We worked very hard and we used the same recording studio we have used for our previous 3 album. Luigi, the sound engineer knows us very well now, so he knows what we want and what we want to try as new stuff, so it’s easier. So, a lot of work but at the same time we were very enthusiastic because we really love the new songs. If you check our official page at www.dominetruemetal.com or our My Space page at www.myspace.com/domineofficial, you will find a video which is a kind of visual diary of the recording sessions. You can tell the atmosphere was very happy.

The themes of the lyrics of "Ancient Spirit Rising" move away from the Sword’n’Sorcery books references you find in Domine’s previous albums or the usual clichés of most Heavy Metal bands. "Ancient Spirit Rising" lyrics deal with universal themes, life, death, joy and sorrow, freedom and misery, all of which are expressed in a poetic, romantic and epic style. I’ve always used metaphors, of course, in every album, but most of the songs of previous albums were based on specific books, like Michael Moorcock’s "Elric Of Melnibonè" of Frank Herbert’s "Dune". This time I wanted to avoid swords, steel, dragons and dungeons and write about personal feelings and views on life, keeping an epic feel to meet the tone of the music. Without sounding too pretentious or arrogant, I would like to follow the path of great song-writers like Tori Amos, Kate Bush or Freddie Mercury, who have written amazing songs about their own personal ideas and feelings. Most of the songs of "Ancient Spirit Rising" are like this, others have reference. "The Lady Of Shalott" is inspired by the evocative painting by W. Waterhouse and by the Alfred Tennyson poem by the same name. This album is very influenced by Victorian age art, poetry and painting. "I Stand Alone (After The Fall)" is inspired by Elric’s saga, at least one was had to be the "old way". The rest is all personal thoughts.

All the painting were done by Giovanna Corsini, same painter who did all our covers. She’s a fan and a supporter of the band and she understands and has the patience to follow my requests, even if sometimes I’m a little demanding. This time she did 100s of pictures and painting around 10 covers before I approved it. She loves Victorian age painters and pre-Raphaelites, so she was on our vibe too. We didn’t want an aggressive cover, we wanted something more "spiritual" and evocative cover. In the beginning, I got in touch with the Tate Gallery museum in London to buy the rights to use "The Lady Of Shalott" image but then I decided not to use that because you can not have any exclusivity and other bands can use the same image in the future.

I’m very proud of "The Lady Of Shalott", "Ancient Spirit Rising" and "How The Mighty Have Fallen" because they are very personal songs, especially in the lyrics, and they are the ones that sounds very complete and mature. I love the melodies too. But I’m sure when we will start to play the album in live gigs, I will truly love the heavier ones like "Tempest Calling" and "The Messenger". It’s two different ways to listen to the album, at home and live.

Which are the artists who influenced you or whom you appreciate particularly ?

Many, many wonderful Artists that made my life better. I usually write down a long list when I answer these kinds of questions. Let me just write some of them, well, they are actually written in the booklet of the cd and the songs "How The Mighty Have Fallen" is in part dedicated to them too. Let’s say Queen, Michael Moorcock, Thin Lizzy, Kansas, Boston (oh my God, I just found out Brad Delp has passed away and I’m a little sad about it), John William Waterhouse, Basil Poledouris, Jethro Tull, Gary Moore, Tori Amos, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, Iron Maiden, Rufus Wainwright, Horslips, Kiss, H.P.Lovecraft, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Glenn Hughes, J.C. Debussy, Aaron Copland, Led Zeppelin, Journey, Frank Herbert, Michael Whelan, Kate Bush, Yes, Caspar David Friedrick, Rodney Matthews, William Blake, Alma Tadema. Let’s stop here….

Well, pros and cons. I see things that I love and things I hate. I got disillusioned pretty quick but at the same time I’m happy I’m still playing in a band and there’s people out there who cares and love our music. The metal scene is not different from the rest of the music scene. There are all the games and rules of the music business, even if the people involved pretend to work with a "pure" kind of music. Big bands get most of the attention, big labels are ruling the scene and medias are mostly interested in big and successful bands only, even if sometimes they preach "artistic" interest. But it’s part of the game, so, as I said, I’m happy I can still play my music and there are people out there who listen to our songs.

Well, usually we get some "Spinal Tap" moments when we play live, when we are on the road. You should have been there when Riccardo, keyboard player, was making the airport metal detector sound BEFORE he passed under it….we tried to explain to the police man he had a metal plate into his skull because he was a war-veterean. It didn’t work and they made him undress to search him and when he took his boots off, it wasn’t funny…Another good story happened the very first day of the European tour we did with Agent Steel. We were in Holland and played the first gig. After the gig, we jumped on the tour bus and the English driver started the engine and left….leaving all the guys of Agent Steel in the venue !!! Crazy…

We will start an Italian tour in April. We hope we can make a lot of gigs and we will play some festivals in summer, not confirmed yet. We would love to play more and more and tour Europe again and play in countries where we have never been, but it’s so difficult. We are not a big band.

We are promoting the album, doing interviews and we will play some gigs. Then, I guess we will start thinking about a new album, but surely not before end of Summer.

Well, thanks a lot for your interest. I just want to invite your listeners to check out our new album "Ancient Spirit Rising", I hope you will enjoy it. THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT !!

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