Their third record will be available on the 16th August and RYL! got the chance to discuss with Cristiano Trionfera about “Labyrinth” !
Hello Cristiano! How are you?
Cristiano Trionfera (vocals/guitar) : Hi! All good here thanks.
So your third record “Labyrinth” is on his way, only a few days left, what’s the message around it?
C : Yeah we’re pretty much there. Well this album is a concept, as we always built our records as pieces that are structured like a story. It is taken from the ancient greek myth of the Labyrinth of Knossos, used as a metaphore of men, facing their fears and struggling to find their way throughout their existences.
What meaning is behind the labyrinth? Is it like you were tortured in your several ideas that you lost yourself in the writing process or…?
C : (laugh) Yeah that could be a way of seeing it. As I said, it a metaphore of human life and actually it is a concept that perfectly fits with our music in my opinion. In some way the concept has been influenced by the music and viceversa.
How do you proceed when you’re about to write a new record?
C : We have found some kind of equilibrium for the writing process since Agony I would say. The whole idea of the concept comes first. It gets more structured and clear as we get closer to the point when we start writing the music. Then comes the music in its entireness. Francesco Paoli and Francesco Ferrini work together writing the songs. When all the songs are there, an it has to be all of them since we keep the structure of the album as an important thing, along woth the lyric concept, we start working on the lyrics. This time the concept has been developped by Tommaso, as he had his vision of the whole story to be treated in specifics part, devided with the songs.
Your press kit says that this album is “taking the bands signature sound to new euphoric heights“, so what can we expect musically?
C : When we all listened to the new material, we realized we had something rare in our hands. What we feel like about this album is something that makes us proud and convinced it will leave a trace. Musically it is for sure more complex than Agony, but not in a technical way or something, its structure, musically, harmonically and from the concept point of view, is way beyond what we have done so far and the care for details is so much, we can only say it will drive crazy all the people who want to really listen to what has been done.
If you had to pick up 3 songs from the record, which one will they be and why?
C : Personally the 3 songs I love the most are Minotaur (the Wrath of Poseidon), Towards the Sun and Epilogue. This simply because to me these are the songs where you can hear Fleshgod in its peefect equilibrium between what was there before and what the future has come with, other than the fact I love the riffs and the harmonies. Obviously the whole album has this great flavour and I love each and every song, but to me these 3 are the most representative of this topic.
I felt that kind of strange and surprising to have both “Prologue” and “Epilogue” in the middle of the album? Why those tracks titles right there and not one at the beginning and the other at the end of the record?
C : It’s because the prologue and the epilogue are refferred to the story between Theseus and Ariadne, which is an important part of the story, where you have the two characters facing each other and after starting and hoping in each other, their relationship desappears because of the path Theseus wants to take.
If you had to describe it in 3 words, which one will they be?
C : Epic, overwhelming, perfected.
What differences could we notice comparing to your previous albums?
C : The differences are to be found into our evolution. We always keep what we like of what we have musically and add what we are curious about and what we imagine Fleshgod could be if we were already in the future years. I know it can sound weird, but we like to go over our music not only thinking about what we do, but also about what we will do. This is also beacuse we try to keep things up so we don’t get bored. It’s not calculating things, just trying to write in an olistic way.
You only had two albums out and your progression is pretty fast. What do you feel about your journey as a band?
C : We’re proud of what we have and we realize that our hard work has paid way more than what we could expect. It’s overwhelming how people has reacted to our work and this makes us want to work even harder to give always something more.
In which way did Nuclear Blast help you through the years?
C : Working with Nuclear Blast has maked a big change for us, since we started dealing with a bigger structure, who is able to give a band the right promotion. With them we are planning to make a great job.
What will your new record offer to your fans? What can they expect from it?
C : They can expect and incredible experience. It’s not because it is my band I’m talking about here, but Labyrinth will blow the mind of who cares of good music an is searching for something really renewing the view of extreme symphoni metal.
What’s the last CD you bought?
C : Wintersun’s “Time”
What’s the last gig you attended to?
C : Actually we tour so much I rarely have time to go to shows. The last one i can remember of is Rammstein in Verona, Italy. A hell of a show.
Any specific message to your French fans?
C : You guys rock. We’ve recently toured France with Septic Flesh and we have loved every show so much. Keep up with that. We’ll be back there soon.
Finally, as a tradition, we are “RockYourLife!”, what rocks your life?
C : Italian cuisine! (laughs)
Website : fleshgodapocalypse.com
