Interview by Ary R.
Cadaveria is one of the most famous Italian black metal bands ever. A new album will be released soon and I had the chance to exchange some words with the resolute frontwoman, Cadaveria, who has explained in short what Cadaveria means in the “horror metal” music scene and what’s music for her.
Hi Cadaveria, welcome to Femme Metal.net. How are you? You’ll release your new album this year and it’s called “Horror Metal”, it will be released via Baker Team. Would you like to reveal something about it?
Our new album entitled “Horror Metal” is already in stores, since January 31st 2012. We are really excited about it as we are very satisfied of how we worked and about the final result. Fans and critics seem to have the same opinion. All the tracks have been written with our new guitar player Dick Laurent. I can say this new entry brought new energy in the band and let us approach to Horror Metal songwriting with a great enthusiasm, as it was our debut album. This feeling can be perceived in the sound, that has been renewed, without distorting its nature. This is surely the most obscure, sick and complete album Cadaveria has even released.
Cadaveria is an italian black metal band, founded in 2001 and you come from a reality that was previously formed by Opera IX. Would you like to give us, shortly, a little biography of the band, for those people who still haven’t listened to your music?
When me and Marçelo Santos (aka Flegias) decided to start a journey into the Metal music it was 1990. After some clumsy hardcore efforts, we entered Opera IX, bringing the female growling voice to the metal scene’s attention. In that period just Sabina Classen from Holy Moses was known in the scene. In 2001 we split up from Opera IX and decided to found a new band, ‘cause we felt we had more different ideas to propose in this musical circle and wanted to unbound ourselves from the stereotypes of the genre we had played with our previous band. From that day on we have ever been in creative ferment and full of new initiatives. Even if in ten years we released only four albums, we think to have done our best and now we can look at our past albums with no regrets. We have got great satisfactions from the gigs we played abroad, in Europe and Central America, and from the fact the number of our fans is still growing day by day.
As I’ve said, this year your new album will be released for Baker Team. I know that, previously, you had a record deal with Scarlet Records and right after with Season of Mist, that have released your previous album, “In Your Blood” (2007). How was born the collaboration with this label?
When we recorded our debut album “The Shadow’s Madame” Scarlet Records showed an immediate interest towards Cadaveria band. With them the cooperation continued also for the second full length. When we were going to release our third album “In Your Blood”, we had a look around, to see if we could embrace a larger market and reaching more fans with a foreign and well structured label. Season of Mist answered it was interested in producing the album. It seemed a good idea, also ‘cause this label has a division in the US. But being a larger label it was less interested in a specific and targeted promotion. For this reason, with our fourth album “Horror Metal”, we decided to come back to Scarlet’s home, that in the meanwhile had created Bakerteam, a division of the main label, more focused on out style. Now we feel at home, we work with our friends and all is more simple. With renewed spurs we are now working better and all of us is doing his best to promote this new release.
Your style is coined as “horror metal”. Could you please explain who had the idea to stick this name to the sound of the band and above everything, the reason why about it?
To be honest I don’t remember exactly who used this definition for the first time to describe our sound, maybe Scarlet Records itself in the period of our debut album release… Anyway, what is sure is that, since then, all fans and critics started using this term to identify Cadaveria style. We liked this, ‘cause finally horror metal doesn’t mean anything specific, ad we love not to be classified and restricted inside a specific genre. If you listen to a Cadaveria album you can find many influences: from the first Black Sabbath to the most recent Tool, passing through Celtic Frost and Death. You know, every label is too tight for this, while a vague term like horror metal is perfect to play our game. Finally with this last album we have played with the word “Horror”: many lyrics have been inspired by horror movies, as well as the band pictures… and the atmospheres you can perceive in these eleven new tracks are surely dark, sick and horror-oriented! So, nothing better than Horror Metal to come back on the scenes after five years!
Cadaveria is surely one of the few italian black metal bands that became famous in a quite extreme and perhaps little-known music scene in Italy. How was the idea of creating a band that has your own name born?
Well, when we went and play abroad with Opera IX, fans welcomed us shouting “Cadaveria, Cadaveria…”. After the split for me and Flegias was simple and natural to use my nickname for the band. This created a sort of continuation, as the singer is always the same. For us it was important to be recognized by fans and that fans knew which were our origins.
You are a very curious band, since all members have the name of a “bad guy” or a movie title by David Lynch. Who started the idea of having an “alter ego” for the band? Especially, how the choice of various “nicknames” was born?
Also in this case we didn’t think about this so much. We are great fans of David Lynch and we love his movies. The ‘bad men’ of his movies have spine and are more interesting than good characters. They remain in your mind as Lynch is used to create a sort of caricature for bad guys. Our music genres is, for definition, bad, disturbed and sometimes abstract, exactly like Lynch’s movies. On stage, as well as on the cinema set, who is under spotlights is an artist and, as artists, we love to play with our image, we like transforming it and we like to be theatrical. So we used Lynch’s bad guy names as the role performed by an actor. Each Cadaveria band member chose the name according to his taste and considering the temperamental affinities with the movie character.
Ok, let’s go back to the album. I’ve got a little chance to listen to it and I was under the impression of having seen some references to atmospheric gothic metal, thrash metal, death metal and especially black metal; in short, there is a bit of everything. How did you decide to try all these styles on a unique album?
Well I have already explained this mix of genres, while I was talking about the term horror metal. This mix can be found in all our albums. Probably this time it is more tangible and evident.
You are known for your image, for being a resolute and powerful woman, but also for your kind of singing that is sometimes more melodic and sometimes it becomes “growl” and aggressive. How do you balance everything? How do you train your own voice?
When I started shouting on the microphone it was just a dirt and rotten growl. Along these twenty years I experimented new vocal solutions, shifting my limits, in order to use and mix the clean vocals and the growl in a more harmonious way, sometimes adding a third way, that is the screaming, a sort of middle stage between growl and clean (or, if you prefer, a more feminine growl sang doing a melody), that is more theatrical and emotional. In all these cases I’m in continuous studying and development. The balance is a question of mind, this duplicity reflects my way of being. My mind tells my body how to emit the voice.
I should admit that this album is very chameleon: there’s a lot of different genres, a very good production behind it, a good mixing, all elements that differ themselves to the previous albums, like “Far Away From Comformity” and “In Your Blood”. How the production of the album has been and especially how was the album born?
Yes, the composition process for this album was a bit different from the ones used fot the previous CDs. Dick Laurent, Marçelo Santos and I composed the most part of the songs. The following phase took place in the recording studios, where Frank Booth developed all the arrangements. We dedicated a lot of time to the production, with Killer Bob at the mixer, in order to create that powerful and rough sound you can listen in “Horror Metal”. All this requested hard work and long time, but we were not in a hurry and our final goal was to go near perfection.
If you could introduce the record with your own words, which words would you use to present it to the fans or to the press?
The most obscure and powerful album even released by the shadows’ madame!
What kind of meaning does this record have for you? What is it for you?
It is the umpteenth birth and like all child birth is the result of efforts and sacrifices, but finally the product gives you a great satisfaction and the memory of the efforts disappears. The more the result is good, the most satisfaction is amplified.
How do you think will it be the reaction of the fans for this new record? Do you think it will be appreciated?
The vast majority of the reactions are extremely positive, and this let us understand we worked the right way. Sure, the detractors are always under the corner, especially if there is a girl singing, but we are accustomed to this and, above all, without rumors you would not be nobody.
Have you already scheduled a European tour or something “big” right after the release of the album?
No, by now we are just doing some live shows and festivals in Italy. Foreign offers are arriving, but it is early to advertise them. We will spread them through our Facebook page and on our website as soon as all will be defined.
This was my last question. Thanks so much for your time. Would you like to tell something to Cadaveria fans and to our readers?
Thanks a lot for the space you dedicated to us. I would like to invite all readers to check out our new album “Horror Metal”. If you cannot find it in the music stores of your city, you can get it online, directly from our website.
Links
MySpace * ReverbNation * Facebook * Twitter * Site