Friday, November 29, 2013

Ragestorm Interview

1.For those that have never heard of you can you tell us a little bit about the band?
Hi everybody! We are Ragestorm, a five members death metal squad formed in 2004 in the icy and forgotten Aosta Valley, in the North West of Italy.
During these 9 years we released 4 EP and in September we finally gave birth to our first full length album called "The Thin Line Between Hope And Ruin" which, in our opinion, is a cool ensemble of music, visual art and philosophy.

2.How would you describe the musical sound of the new album and also how does it differ from previous releases?
"The Thin Line Between Hope And Ruin" is a death metal album with a lot of different influences; european and american death metal, thrash metal from old and new school, southern metal, some metalcore and also some classical music and electronic stuff.
It's a metal opera divided in 11 parts where each of which has something to say.
For us this record represents the evolution of our last EP "The Meatgrinder Manifesto" and it differ from our previous releases because is more aggressive, more mature and more manifold.

3.What are some of the some lyrical topics and subjects the band explores with the music?
Our third EP, "The Meatgrinder Manifesto", was a mini-concept about what we called "The Meatgrinder Theory", a philosophical metaphor inspired by the famous Plato's "Myth Of The Cave" which explains our point of view about the society we're living in.
Since "The Thin Line Between Hope And Ruin" represents an evolution of its predecessor, in this new record we deepened and expanded the Meatgrinder Theory giving birth to a complex concept divided in two different parts: the songs until "Acid Tears" are what we call the evil half of the album and they are the direct continuation of the original theory, while the other half, from "Hari Seldon's Speech" to "Reaching The Impossible" is the good part of the album, also containing the title track "The Thin Line Between Hope And Ruin" which is the second part of the Meatgrinder Theory.
As I said, "The Thin Line Between Hope And Ruin" is not only about music and if you want to really enjoy it you also have to read the lyrics and admire the beautiful artwork made by our friend Luca Galvani (http://galvani.tumblr.com/)

4.What is the being and inspiration behind the name Ragestorm?
The band was formed when we were a bunch of angry and bored kids, so we chose  to call ourselves Ragestorm because it sounds cool and expresses well the anger that pushed us to play metal.
But please, don't imagine us like the usual murder face death metal freaks because, beyond the rage and the will to bring chaos and destruction world wide, we basically are 5 easy guys who love to laugh, drink beer and play video games.

5.What are some of the best shows that the band has played so far and how would you describe your stage performance?
The best show we ever had the chance to play is for sure the one at the 2009 edition of Eggfest, in Holland, supporting Rotting Christ.
Anyway, be on stage is (almost) always a great experience.
We especially love to share the stage with other very cool undergound bands like Broken Mirrors, Lacerhate, Straight On Target and our brothers Southern Drinkstruction.
How would I describe our stage performance?
Five noisy motherfuckers having some good friendly violent fun with the audience!

6.Do you have any touring or show plans for the future?
Nope, no touring at the moment.
We'll probably plan some show around Europe next year so stay tuned!

7.Currently you are unsigned, are you looking for a label or have received any interest?
We received several proposals over the years but all the agreements that we read were more or less frauds masked as big deals.
When we were younger we really wanted to sign for a label but now we don't care very much about it; in fact, being unsigned is cool because we can do whatever we want whenever we want and nobody can bother us.

8.On a worldwide level how has the feedback been to your music by fans of death and thrash metal?
Apparently there is a lot of people out there that is really enjoying our last release; from die hard thrash and death metal fans to people who prefer other kinds of music, and this is a big satisfaction for us.
But of course the only way to know if the fans are appreciating "The Thin Line Between Hope And Ruin" is to wait for the first quarterly report of sales...

9.What direction do you see your music heading into on future releases?
Well, it's a little bit too soon to answer this question.
We composed just one song after the release of  "The Thin Line Between Hope And Ruin" and at the moment we're working on a big amount of new riffs.
What I can say is that we'll probably focus more on the structure of the songs to make them even more fluent and we'll also try to write more simple riffs, with less notes and more anger!

10.What are some bands or musical styles that have influenced your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?
We listen to a lot of different kinds of metal and we try to keep the best from every band we love.
We like  Hypocrisy, Carcass, At The Gates and Machine Head for their melodic taste; The Crown, Chimaira, Sepultura (the real ones!), Hatebreed, Impaled Nazarene, Behemoth and Krisiun for their fierce and ruthless ignorance, Dimmu Borgir and Decapitated for some the structure of some songs and because they're fucked in their minds, The Haunted and Pantera for the sounds and then Slayer.
Because Slayer are god.
Nowadays we're listening more or less the same stuff we listen to usually...I think the most interesting albums of 2013 are "Surgical Steel" from Carcass and "Yoshu Fukushu" from Maximum The Hormone. We really love those guys!
11.Outside of music what are some of your interests?
We all love beer, video games and movies, especially horrible horror b-movies.
That said, of course everyone has different interests outside the band, like activism and political commitment, super nerd stuff like cosplay and action figures collection, american football, martial arts, sci-fi, philosophy, tv series and so on.

12.Any final words or thoughts before we wrap up this interview?
Of course we want to thank you for this cool interview and we would like to greet all your audience and to reassure them about an important thing: since Ragestorm is a 100% independent band, don't be afraid to go on iTunes and buy "The Thin Line Between Hope And Ruin", we promise you that not even a fuckin penny will go to some greedy record producer ready to spend it for parties and alcohol!
We'll use that money firstly to pay off the album and only in a second moment for parties and alcohol.
Cheers everybody!

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