Rustfield

Interview date

20 Janvier 2014

Interviewer

dominique

I N T E R V I E W

Interview Andrea & Davide (via email)


Hi thank you for this great first album and for giving a little bit of your time to the French webzine Aux Portes Du Metal

Andrea : Thanks for taking the time for Rustfield and for the kind review of our first album. We've learned French at school, however we are not remembering all necessary vocabulary. Therefore, if you don't mind, we will pursue in English. OK?

Can you tell us some more about your group and its music for our readers who don’t know Rustfield yet?

Andrea : Yes, of course! We are a newcomer progressive rock/metal band form Torino, Italy. Our music style mixes different atmospheres. In our songs you can percieve heavy metal, electronic ambient, melodic rock and psychedelic. This is our personal way to play progressive music.

Davide : We started this adventure in late 2007 and the German label Massacre Records released our first album “Kingdom of Rust” on December 2013. This one is featured by some special guests such as John Macaluso (Symphony X, ex Y.J. Malmsteen) on drums, Federica De Boni (White Skull) on vocals and Douglas R. Docker (Docker’s Guild, ex Biloxi) on keyboards.

In 2009 you released your first demo EP and only in 2013 your first album. What did you do during those four years and why did it take you so long to produce "Kingdom of Rust"?

Davide : Well, after the self-production of the first demos in 2009, we composed new songs and we produced a new demo that was released in July 2011. In the meantime, we started the live activity. The recording session of “Kingdom of Rust” started in September 2011 to end in January 2012 (that’s because we recorded in different studios depending on our needs). Then we mixed the album in Torino which was mastered in Stockholm. Afterwards we had to take care of graphics, artwork, booklet and so on. In the blink of an eye it was early autumn 2012. The next step was promoting our album to the labels. As labels are receiving hundreds CDs per month, they are needing a long time to give an answer. In our case, we received some feedback more than one year after having sent the promo material!

Andrea : At the end we were quite lucky as we received more than just one offer. So we took our time to compare and to select the best one. We signed with Massacre Records on early April 2013. Their first slot for releasing newcomer's album was on December 2013… So, here we are! I must say that working with such time delay can be quite frustrating but at the end the album is out on a good label, who’s promoting it in an excellent way. So we’re happy!

How is the creative process within the band? I saw that only Andrea and Davide generate the music and lyrics? Is Rustfield a totalitarian band?

Andrea : Mmhh… Yes, more or less it is! ;) Well, the reason for this must be sought back in 2007. At the time we were searching for other guys to join us. Our idea was to built a classic 5 guys band. We actually don’t really come from Torino but from Torre Pellice, a small rural village 50 kilometers west from Torino (in fact we are closer to France than to Torino!). In this area there are many musicians, however heavy metal is not so popular. We therefore hardly found good willing people interested by our musical approach. Moreover, among the few remaining people, there were almost nobody interested to do music seriously. Indeed, since the beginning we were willing to release an album with an important label, even if this requires a hard work and sacrifices. This goal was not shared by the musicians we met on our way. So, as the desire to compose music was too big and we started working with Davide without having a real band.

Davide : In September 2009 the first demos were ready (we were helped by a friend of us who recorded drums). This was great to have some finished songs to show to interested musicians what we composed. This was the way we found Alessandro & Luca Spagnuolo, our bass and guitar players, as well as a drummer. With this lineup, we have been able to rehearse for the first time as a real band. And as the other guys were learning the songs of the first demo, Andrea and me were already working on the songs for the second demo! The same process happened again with the songs from “Kingdom of Rust”, as when we were composing them, the other guys were getting confident with the latest demos. Salvo Amato, our drummer, entered the band when the recording session was over. To summarize, we can say that we actually did not decide to compose all the songs by ourselves, it just happened! :)

What are your sources of inspiration, from classic big names as well as from emerging bands?

Andrea : Ah, it’s very hard to tell! I listen to many different bands but I can’t tell which of them was a source of inspiration. From progressive metal world, I really love the first period of Dream Theater, but I don’t think that our music looks like theirs. I also love everything that Fates Warning did since the 90s. Perhaps our electronic moods were partially inspired by them. From progressive rock world, I love Pink Floyd, even if I don’t like so much their very early days. Then I appreciate as well bands such as The Moody Blues and the early King Crimson. Finally comes the more heavy metal side of my inspiration. Bands like Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Helloween, Blind Guardian and Iced Earth as well as little bit more extreme metal bands like Opeth and Dark Tranquillity. As you can see I have many different tastes but I think that Rustfield’s sound has been inspired by very few of them. This is nice because many reviewers that listened to “Kingdom of Rust” wrote that our sound can be compared to band’s like Threshold, Styx and Riverside, and the funny thing is that we never listened to these bands! :) I just saw Riverside live one time, I really enjoyed their show but I never listened to one of their albums. I’m pretty curious, I should listen to these bands a little bit more, perhaps I will also find some similarities!

Davide : My inspirations are Pink Floyd, Pain of Salvation, I love the early Dream Theater also. I listen to a lot of Italian and international folk music, as well as a guy like Peter Gabriel. But I don´t think that this kind of music influenced Rustfield´s sound…

Do you have the time listening to new release of the metal scene in general and from the prog / psyche scene in particular?

Andrea : Unfortunately I don’t have so much free time recently. A part from my regular work, I am an engineer, Rustfield is a very time consuming activity. I giving all of myself to this band and spent a lot of time on the band’s various activities. I rarely have free time to listen to new releases. Said that, few days ago, I listened to “Pirut”, the new album from Kauan, a Ukranian band. A nice album, a mix between post rock and doom, very gloomy and interesting sound!

Your progressive metal would fit perfectly within the Scandinavian thriving progressive metal scene. Do you feel close to what bands like Pain of Salvation are doing?

Davide : Oh yes, many reviewers said that after listening to “Kingdom of Rust”. I can’t tell you if we feel close to the Scandinavian progressive metal scene. As said above, it is hard even for us to tell what are our inspirations. I like Pain of Salvation, especially the sound they had in albums like “Remedy Lane” and “The Perfect Element”. I am not so updated with the latest releases but I've seen them live for the second time two years ago, they are very emotional and intense, they’re great. After the last show we played in Germany, two months ago, a guy told us that our music sounded a little bit like Pain of Salvation style. That’s definitively a compliment! Personally I don’t feel or percieve any similarity between us but there should be something that I’m missing, as this is not the only opinion of a guy met in Germany! ;)

In my review, I mentioned that this first album sounded like a melting pot of all your musical influences (prog, psyche, heavy, power ...). Do you think that this diversity is a strength and do you want to maintain this schema in the future?

Andrea : Yes, in my opinion the diversity of the album is the strong point of our work. We are not inventing anything of revolutionary but we are mixing different kinds of music in order to make them sounding fresh and, somehow, new. Fortunately, many reviewers, such as you, thought that this melting pot between metal, prog and electronic music, could be something interesting for the international scene. We’re glad because this hybrid style is exactly the way we love making music! On the other hand, because of this particular sound, we must admit that the listeners of “Kingdom of Rust” must be quite open minded. He should be good willing to listen to the album two of three times before to understand and really appreciate its heterogeneous style. In fact, some reviewers thought that the album goes towards too many directions without choosing the right one. 

Davide : Since the beginning, we knew that it was a risk to take into account. To be honnest, there was no other choice we could make, that was just what came out of our work! Of course we cannot please everyone but we received many positive feedback. That's makes us feeling good!:) Regarding future, I can tell you that we are already working on a handful of songs for the next album. They are stopped at different composing steps. Some of them just need lyrics and some of them are just rough sketches or riffs. So far, they sound like heavy and electronic style and some also have some kind of post rock influence. This is something that we never tried before, but we don’t want to set hurdles to our creativity! A lot of work still must be done but hopefully the new pieces will be even more interesting than the ones in “Kingdom of Rust”. Only time will tell…

There are some tracks from "Kingdom of Rust" highly inspired by electronic music. Are you interested by this musical approach and are you planning to integrate it some more in the future?

Andrea : Yes, of course! :) I think that my interest in electronic music was born when I was fourteen years old and I started listening to Pink Floyd. They regularly used electronic instruments. Albums like Wish You Were Here or A Momentary Lapse of Reason were very important for my musical development. Nowadays I think that OSI, the side project of Jim Matheos and Kevin Moore, is one of the best examples of how electronic music can be integrated with heavy metal. The thing that attracts me most in electronic music, is that it doesn’t matter if you can play a thousand notes per minute. You are only doing good electronic music if you go deep in the research of a peculiar sound.

Davide : This is very interesting because it forces you to understand and study your machines as much as you can. Everybody is good to make a sequencer run, but few are good in making it reproducing interesting and quality sounds. I think that our ability in knowing the machines is growing day by day so this, hopefully, will be a fundamental starting point for any future development of our style. 

In this album you invited a few guests to participate in the recording (John Macaluso on drums, Federica De Boni on vocals, Douglas R. Docker on keyboards). Why asking for outsiders' input and how did their work affect the band’s working process?

Davide : Well, their input was very important but was not connected with our working process. As we said before, most of all the songs in “Kingdom of Rust” were previously composed as demos (some songs actually changed title along the way, you could know that just if you were an early day’s fan!). Every guest just recorded the pieces when the production phase was already done. Anyway the story of these three guest appearances are different. I knew John from a drum clinic he had in Torino. We met again at the studio when he was recording with Andreas Polito (the sound engineer that mixed “Kingdom of Rust”). We made him listening to some of our demos and he decided to join us for recording drums on Waxhopes. We were all happy with the result and decided to have him with us to record six other songs. Drums on the remaining four songs were recorded by Max Gordiani, our former drummer. Max played with us just for two shows before to be permanantly replaced by Salvo Amato. During that period, we were regularly changing of drummer and were very lucky to meet John on our way. He is is a very talented drummer and I think that the songs were valorized thanks to its participation. The story was different for Federica. We always loved her vocals, especially on Tales from the North, the most popular White Skull album. We learned from Danilo Bar (W.S. guitar player) that she was coming back from US to join the band. We therefore got in touch with Tony Mad Fontò (W.S. guitar player and leader) and ask him if she could be interested to participate as guest to our album. She agreed and we proposed her to perform on Waxhopes, the one we thought could be most suitable verse among the eleven songs of “Kingdom of Rust”. We are honored by having her on our album, she is like a hero for us. We liked her vocals for ten years and hearing her singing on one of our songs was an amazing experience!

Andrea : The story is different for Douglas as he is a good friend of us. He gave me some piano lessons when I was a kid in the middle of the 90s. He then left Italy to play, work and travel in France, Sweden and Thailand. We got in touch again soon after he was back home in 2008. Since that day, we have a close collaboration. We joined Docker’s Guild, his rock opera project, as special guests, for The Age of Ignorance, its debut album. We're also part of the Docker’s Guild live lineup. Doug recorded some keyboard and electronic solos on few demos. We liked what he did and we decided to keep its contribution on the album. Initially, we were looking for a permanent keyboard player to join the band. However as it was hard to find the right person able to give its sound development experience. Douglas was the right guy but, unfortunately, was too busy with its own projects. He declined being a permanent member but stayed as special guest. The album could have been released without the contribution of the three guests (we play those songs live anyway without having them on stage), but I think that what they did for us was amazing and somehow important. We may ask the contribution of other guests in the future but the creation phase will remain between us.

My fellow reviewers and I have had the opportunity to review a few good Italian metal bands recently (Kingcrow, The Moor, Deceit). What do you think of the Italian metal scene and are we missing some good bands?

Andrea : Once you know Rustfield, you’re not missing anybody else! ;) Well, I know Kingcrow as we were in touch some month ago for a common show in Torino. They come from Rome. Unfortunately, times rae complicated as many venues are closing or have a limited activity reserving stages just to very big acts. Therefore we were not able to match and meet at this oocasion. To be hones, I don’t know these two other bands you mentioned but I know good bands like White Skull of course, Sadist, Death SS.

Is it easy being a metal artist in Italy and is that why you signed on a German label (Massacre Records)?

Andrea : Oh, no, it is not easy at all! The situation is quite crazy in my opinion. If you go to the big festivals you can see that heavy metal is very popular in our country but you cannot listen to anything metal on the radio and on the TV. It seems that this kind of music has to struggle in the underground still today! For me, during the golden age of heavy metal, the Italian music business did not realize that this could become an opportunity. There was something bigger in those days and things remained the same up to now. Moreover, the economic crisis of the last years probably killed a market that was already struggling to survive. For example, we there was only one big historical metal festival and unfortunatelly the 2013 edition did not take place. No festivals, no places to play, no advertise on high diffusion media, this situation is everything but rosy for Italian metal scene.

 

Davide : Anyway, we did not decide to sign to Massacre only for this harsh situation, but also because they are a twenty years experienced label which worked with many renowned bands. They just offered us what we thought our debut album needed and we’re very happy of their promotion and marketing work. The other reason is that I am actually living in Germany and this could be an advantage in order to extend the band’s live activity in this country.

You just made the opening of the album in Rivoli, near Turin. Is that a tour is scheduled for 2014 and if so, will we have the chance to see Rustfield on stage in France?

Andrea : This is exactly what we are planning to do! The next challenge we’re preparing to face is a tour, perhaps supporting a more known act in progressive metal scene. We wait eagerly to perform in front of the public and that would be the best occasion to make people listen to some songs of “Kingdom of Rust”. I think that live activity is the most fulfilling experience for a musician. The problem is that touring is becoming more and more expensive. This is a big issue for new bands who don’t have yet dedicated fans or audience. We have to invest a lot of money to create this fan base. Anyway this is what we want to do and sooner or later we’ll do it so, hopefully, we will meet in France! :)

Do you have a final message for our French readers?

Andrea : Of course. Thanks to the webzine for this interview and for the kind review. Thanks as well to all our French cousins, for taking a slice of your time for Rustfield. See you soon ;)


Venez donc discuter de cette interview, sur notre forum !