interview with Aexylium
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?
Let me present the band:
Matteo Emanuele Morisi, almost 33 y-o, Drums
Gabriele Cacocciola, 26 y-o, Bass
Roberto Cuoghi: 30 y-o, Guitar/Bagpipe
Fabio Buzzago, 30 y-o, Guitar
Stefano Colombo, 23 y-o, Keyboards
Leandro Pessina, 24 y-o, Flutes/Bouzouki
Federico Bonoldi, 30 y-o, Violin
Steven Merani, 30 y-o, Singer
Where are you from? We are from Varese, a city of Northern Italy
What year did the band form? The first “embryo” of Aexylium was born in 2014 in Cunardo, in the deep north of Italy, thanks by Matteo and Roberto, and in one year, one by one, the other members started to join.
Have any of you played in other bands? Some of us had already played in certain bands before Aexylium, and we use to play different genres. We can assume that Aexylium is a Folk Metal Band, but for example the Rhythm Guitarist Roberto comes from Punk, the Bass player Gabriele use to play Progressive metal, the keyboardist Stefano was into Symphonic metal and so on, and we think that this moltitude of differences is our strong point when we compose: you never know what you are going to get, we only know what we want to bring to the audience, which is a powerful and joyful show.
How often and where do you reherse? We usually rehearse once a week, with some exception.
What made you decide to make this music? / What are your songs about?
The idea of making this particular type of metal came because it is very ductile: our songs can speak about something immaterial, like legends, demons, fantastic places, and they can have some moral meaning, of course, but the topic can also be very material, like “drink until you throw up” and stuff like that. And also because it's fun.
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? / Do you start with the music or the lyrics? Generally, during composition, we follow the lead of whoever wrote the structural part of the song, or the Main riff etc. but of course this “whoever” is always open for any variations, so everyone can express his ideas about the song, which is why the tracks of “Tales from This Land” are very different one from another. We generally start with the music and then we add the lyrics Steven wrote, usually in english.
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? / Do you have a regular place you play live often? / Have you done any covers live? We usually play in open festivals during the summer, and in Live Clubs during the rest of the year; our tracklist for gigs is pretty much always the same, with almost all the tracks of “Tales from this Land”, our first album, and a pair of covers, usually from Alestorm or Korpiklaani.
Do you have any new material? In this period we're composing the materials for our next album, and we can say we're happy with with the results, as we're trying to give life to something more “over the edge” than our first work.
What was your first gig like? / What was your latest gig? Our first official live event was in Dumenza (VA), Italy, during the 2015 Dumeltica festival, and is was very important because for some of us was the first gig of their lifetime; we were a little worried and scared, it was like the “Baptism of fire” of the band, but everything went surprisely well and it became a wonderful memory. Our latest (for now) gig was in April 20th at the Legend Club in Milan, when we played as guests at the Release Party for the new Atlas Pain Album. We have a couple of gigs already scheduled for this summer, on June 15th at the Wings of Bea festival near Vercelli and on July 6th at the Spluga Celtica in Sondrio
Where can people buy your merchandise? We have our merchandise, our T-shirts, our Pins and the “Tales from This Land” CD, and you can find everything on our Faebook page
