interview with Resurrecturis
Have any of you played in other bands? At present time Resurrecturis is a personal project that I carry on with the help of several highly skilled musicians. Practically all of them have other projects or solo careers. Most notably Enrico, our vocalist, leads The Shell Collector and NRec and Manuel, our bassist, plays in KMfromMYills. These are very interesting projects and I suggest everyone with broad tastes to check them out. If your taste also embrace classical music, our guitarist Luca plays a renaissance instrument, viola da gamba (which we also included in a song of our new album!). Finally Angelo plays in some rockabilly band, we are quite a eclectic lot.
As for me, I have devoted entirely my skills to Resurrecturis, so with the exception of the occasional guest appearance on other projects, I’m 100% doing music only for Resurrecturis!
How is it that you started playing music? I bought my first guitar around 1985. I was crazy about heavy/thrash metal and needed to participate to it, not be a mere listener. So I got myself this piece of wood and a 30 W transistor amplifier. I got hooked for life.
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?
The current Resurrecturis line up is:
Carlo Strappa (g), Enrico Tiberi (v), Luca Favoni (g), Manuel Coccia (b), Angelo de Santi (d).
In our forthcoming album, “Nazienda”, drums are played by former member, Alessandro Vagnoni who now drums full time with Bologna Violenta.
Have you had other previous members? Over the years we collected something like 6 vocalists, 4 guitarists, 3 bassists, 5 drummers. At least I made a lot of friends through the band!
Did you make music even when you were young? Yes, I started when I was 14 and never quit doing noise…
Where are you from? Fermo, a small city on the Adriatic coast of Italy. All the other members come from within a radius of approx 150 Km from there!
What year did the band form? In the past millennium. In 1990. It was very, very different then. Death metal and extreme music in general were scarce and hard to find. At our shows we got very mixed reactions that went from adoration to utter hostility.
What's your style of genre? We define ourselves Extreme Metal, but we’re aware that it only partially captures our sound. We have many different influences and our songs range from slow ballads all the way to fast grinding blastbeat explosions.
If we were to pick up a genre name for the lyrics we may opt for existentialist metal, but that would sound a bit silly!
What inspires you? Real life. The things that everyday happen to us and that we occupy most of our time with.
In the past I could get inspired by movies, other songs, news, books. Now all these things could be instrumental in order to widen the comprehension of a certain topic, but the basic idea will normally come from direct experiences.
How often and where do you rehearse? Almost never. Unfortunately we’re a bit scattered in a territory of 200 Km’s so it’s a bit complicated, also because we’re all pretty busy with work, different projects, families etc. Luckily today we have technologies that allow you to produce music and prepare for a gig also without meeting. Maybe this modus operandi is not optimal, but at least it allows us to keep the band going.
If we are to embark on a important tour we’ll try to schedule a bit of warm up rehearsal sessions…
How have you developed since you started with the music? Absolutely. It would not make much sense at this point to continue to rehash the same old ideas and habits. Experimenting and discovering new things is much more thrilling.
Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that? At present time we don’t have a booking agency, but I feel we badly need one, so if there’s some professional and well organized booking agent reading this that wants to work with a live killing machine, please write to us!
What made you decide to make this music? It’s in my blood! I must have been 9 or 10 when I first listened on the telly to a song by British hard rockers UFO. It left an incredible impression on me… Months later I became a die-hard Kiss fan. In a matter of a couple of years I discovered Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, iron Maiden and Ozzy. By the time I was 14 I was into Venom, Exodus and Metallica and shortly after started hunting underground demo releases. Music has always occupied a very special position in my life.
What are your songs about? This new album, “Nazienda”, that’s coming out on September 25th, tells the story of a working day, from dozing in the bed with your partner before the alarm clock starts buzzing, until several hours later, after a long day in the office, you fall asleep in front of the TV set. Not really a story, but more a series of episodes that intend to describe the lives of many company employees in the world today!
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? That’s me, Carlo, I write 100% of the music and the lyrics then the arrangements are done together.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? We begin creating a thematic grid of the album, where each song will be a part of a mosaic. So we create this general picture in our heads, and then we start creating the music of the songs, but always keeping in mind the place that the song will have in the general framework.
Have you done any covers live? Yes, we’ve done several. Napalm Death’s “Unchallenged Hate” was the one that we played most. Then there were Earth Crisis’ “Firestorm” or Sepultura’s “Refuse/Resist”. Once we did a show where we played 4 cover songs and two of our originals. This special show was a tribute to passed away musicians of the initial death/grind/black scenes. We called this concert the “Death To Death Metal Concert”. It was filmed and it’s available on YouTube in our channel: www.youtube.com/resurrecturisvideo
More recently we also have released a cover version of Attitude Adjustment’s “Working Class Pride”, an old 80’s HC song that we sped up and metalized a bit – I love the way it turned out! Check it out at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucBGT40Bwy4
What language do you sing in? Despite the fact that we were the first Italian band ever to sing in Italian, our new songs are in English exclusively. In the 11 songs of “Nazienda” we’ve only included 1 sentence in Italian.
What was your first gig like? That was special: we played in Modena on October 31st 1990, which is pretty distant from where we live. But deathgrind was such an extreme thing back then, that nobody wanted to allow us on stage in our part of Italy. It was a nice show, held in a squat in front of a decent audience. I remember it was freezing cold and I was playing guitar with fingerless gloves because of that!
What was your latest gig? It was in a metal stronghold in our area, named La Piccola. We played with Organic Illusion and Duality. The crowd seemed to really like us. We hadn’t played our neighborhood, so there were many who badly wanted to see us!
Where can people buy your merchandise? At our website www.resurrecturis.com
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days? That’s fine, it doesn’t bother me. Music is meant to be listened to, not to be locked in a drawer and unavailable until you put a token. Good bands will eventually make money from gigs and merchandise.
How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? There’s plenty of literature that describes the enormous changes that are reshaping the music industry. I appreciate the fact that all bands from all over the world can today compete on pretty equal terms, meaning that there are instruments within everyone’s reach to make his music available to the most far away and remote music lover! There’s probably less money to be made but the audience is global, so those who work really hard can achieve more than in the past, or at least have a chance to do so!
What do you think of my work? Back in the 80’s I was doing my own fanzine, named Lethal Metal. I did 4 issues of it! I know it’s a very hard work, contacting bands, editing texts, creating graphics, etc. It’s a thing that you do only if you’re moved by a great passion, because there is no money to be done. So I really respect you for your work and for creating an outlet to make people aware of small underground bands. Keep up with the hard work.
How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? It’s not about this single interview. It’s more about having a solid and continuous stream of information and material to come out from the band. Over tine this makes your band’s name familiar to people and they may even like some of your songs then!
Do you have any role models or idols? Bill Steer (Carcass), Chuck Schuldiner (Death) and Paul Spekmann (Master) were probably a big source of motivation for many years though I tend to think of them as peers rather than idolize them.
What have been your biggest obstacles? Having the wrong fellow members in the band’s line up. That is the hard truth I’ve learnt from my past experiences: unmotivated people who see music as a hobby, should play in hobby bands. The motivated, ambitious musician should be able to recognize his own kind and stick to them. Otherwise it will all be a waste of time and work!
What advice would you give other bands or artists? Work had on your instruments and on your personalities. Develop a unique vision and then conquer the world. Don’t try to do vice versa. It won’t work!!
What are your web sites?
www.facebook.com/resurrecturismusic
www.soundcloud.com/resurrecturis
www.youtube.com/resurrecturisvideo
How can people reach you? [email protected]
What are your plans for the future? Play live in support for “Nazienda” and increase our following worldwide
Do you have something to add? Yes. Thanks to you, Robex, for the opportunity to present our band in your blog. It’s always great to have the opportunity to present our project!
To those who are reading this, I advice strongly to listen to our imminent “Nazienda” album. It’s fucking great and different!