MESCHALINA
Meschalina
come from Italy and play something unique and innovative. They have baptised
their style "electro-rap-core" and I couldn't agree more! So, I bet you
will find this itnerview as interesting as their music is! We all need
to find and focus on something 2 die 4...
1.HELLO AND CONGRATULATIONS FOR
YOUR VERY BEAUTIFUL MUSIC! ANYWAY PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELVES TO THE READERS
BY STATING SOME OF YOUR MOST IMPROTANT MOMENTS AS A BAND.
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The most important moment in our life
as a band is certainly the day of our first little school-concert. We were
not a good band (rather a bad band), but we understood we wanted to become
true musicians and started working hard to make this dream come true.
2.WHY DID YOU NAME THE BAND THIS WAY?
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SUGGEST AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE A FEMALE NAME? WHAT
DOES THIS LITTLE HUMAN-CREATURE AT THE BAND'S LOGO REPRESENT? IS IT HAPPY,
ANGRY OR IS IT BEING SARCASTIC?
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Our band ‘s name refers obviously to
the Mexican hallucinogenic drug which makes people falling into a trance
and which, in Italy, is called MESCALINA. We only added an H between C
and A. So it ‘s only fortuitously a female name. Our little mascotte (whose
name is Sean and who is a nice human-like creature) doesn ‘t represent
much: he ‘s only a happy and quite foolish half-a-man. He ‘s spindly, a
bit crooked and we love him ‘cause he ‘s very un-cool and funny, too. He
‘s just a nice way to tease ourselves.
3.GIVE US SOME GENERAL INFO ON "SOMETHING
2 DIE 4". WHERE WAS IT RECORDED, WHO WAS THE PRODUCER, HOW LONG DID IT
TAKE YOU? ARE YOU SATISFIED BY THE FINAL RESULT?
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Something 2 die 4 has been recorded
in Rome (LEGEND DIGITAL STUDIOS) by Mauro Matteucci and Valerio Cesaroni
and mixed by Mauro Andreolli in Trento (we thank them all again!). The
EP is a co-production: the producers are David Tranquilli (MILITANT) for
a half and Matteo Valente (our guitar-player) and Stefano Teatini (our
singer) for the second half and we have worked hard for an year before
it saw the light. We undoubtedly like the final result, but we will never
be fully satisfied because we always have new ideas and projects. We constantly
work to create something better and what we have already done seems to
us never enough.
4.YOUR MUSIC IS EXTREMELY UNIQUE! YOU
DESCRIBE IT AS ELECTRO-RAP-CORE, HOWEVER, I THINK THE METAL FEELING IS
OBVIOUS AND LIES UNDERNEATH THE COMPOSITIONS AND YOUR ATTITUDE. DO YOU
AGREE? NAME SOME OF THE BANDS THAT ARE LISTED AMONG YOUR INFLUENCES AND
NAME SOME OF YOUR MOST BELOVED ALBUMS. WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO USE A DRUM
MACHINE AND NOT A REAL DRUMMER?
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Yes, the metal attitude is really evident
in our EP: we start the composition of every song by the study of the rhythm
guitar ‘s riffs and then arrange the other instruments and write down the
lyrics. It could explain why our songs sound so much “metal” as you said.
Anyway we are planning to reduce a little bit the role of guitars in our
next work to give more importance to the samples which give originality
to our sound. We decided to use a drum machine for this reason: to be original
and to create an uncommon style of music. We really cannot list our favourite
bands ‘cause they ‘re really too many: we are, first of all, music lovers
and collectors and love almost all kind of good music (metal, crossover,
electronic, drum ‘n bass, IDM, industrial, gothic, rock, hard-core, etc.).
We tried to put all this together in our EP because we love all this kind
of music at the same level and we didn ‘t want to choose. We hope we have
done something beautiful.
5.WHERE ARE YOUR LYRICS REFERRING TO?
WHAT INSPIRES YOU TO WRITE LYRICS AND HOW IMRPOTANT ARE THEY FOR YOU? YOU
HAVE WRITTEN SOME REALLY GREAT LYRICS, WHICH ARE A PUNCH IN THE STOMACH
FOR THE U.S. AND THE POLITICS IN GENERAL. TELL US A FEW THINGS ABOUT THEM...
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All the lyrics are written by Stefano
(our singer) and they refer to existence and philosophy, to deep and desperate
feelings, but also to social and political matters. They are about the
non-sense of our existence, the nothingness that surrounds us, but also
about our need of a dreams, of an ideal, of “Something 2 die 4”. They are
very important for Stefano ‘cause they come right out from his soul which
is generally very closed to the outside and ‘cause they explain the “dualism”
of his mind (it ‘s for this reason that we have printed on the back cover
of our EP some verses taken from a famous poem by A. Boito –an Italian
poet- called “Dualismo” –“Dualism” in English-: those few verses explain
very well the sense of the whole EP and of Stefano ‘s philosophy). Anyway
we are not always sad and serious and our lyrics and music are not always
so “gothic”: we also think music is fight and, for this reason, our songs’
lyrics often analize social and political matters (for example, Bleeding
U.S.A. is a song about American foreign policies). Moreover we also like
to tease ourselves so don’ t take us too seriously. ;)
6.YOU HAVE COVERED A RAGE AGAINST THE
MACHINE SONG "BULLET IN THE HEAD". WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO COVER THIS SONG
FROM THIS PARTICULAR BAND? IF YUO ASK ME, I'D SAY THAT YOU HAVE QUITE MANY
SIMILARITIES IN YOUR SOUND WITH RATM... ARE YOU SATISFIED BY THE FEEDBACK
YOU GOT TILL NOW? ARE YOU UNDER NEGOTIATIONS WITH LABELS?
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We have covered R.A.T.M. ‘cause our
band was originally a R.A.T.M. cover band and we owe very much to those
4 guys from California that we decided to pay a little tribute to them.
Our work has gained us some good reviews and we are very happy for it,
but the real feedback still has to come: we will send promotional packs
to many labels next month and we hope some of them will notice us and like
to invest on our music.
7.DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS FOR LIVE SHOWS?
WHAT SHOULD THE METALLERS EXPECT FROM A MESCHALINA LIVE SHOW? SHARE SOME
OF YOUR EXPERIENCES FROM YOUR LIVE SHOWS WITH US...
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We have already taken part to many
live shows here in Italy and we hope we ‘ll soon tour the rest of Europe.
Our shows are not only based on music: we play our songs while every kind
of video-projections (deeply related to the lyrics and meaning of the songs
we play) appear behind the stage to make people think or flip depending
on the different moments of the show. We think people should perceive music
through the five senses and not only through the hearing one. It doesn
‘t mean we don ‘t like to make people dance and jump. We do it on the stage
and we want people to do it under the stage. What else? We dress in strange
ways to give particular messages to the audience. Be present to one of
our shows and you ‘ll see…
8.WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO SOMEONE THAT
DOESN'T KNOW YOU, IN ORDER TO INTRIGUE HIS INTEREST? WHICH IS YOUR MOST
APPEALING ELEMENT ACCORDING TO YOU?
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We think our most appealing element
is originality, so we suggest our EP to everyone who wants to feel something
new and uncommon.
9.THE COVER ARTWORK OF "SOMETHING 2
DIE 4" SHOWS A FEMALE NAKED BODY. WHAT DO YUO WANT TO SUGGEST WITH IT?
IS THIS A REASON TO DIE FOR? :)))
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The cover artwork shows a naked female
body. It ‘s something beautiful: it‘s art against mediocre reality, it
‘s a dream against the solid truth. We want people to dream, to live and
not to survive. We want something to die for and we want people to die
for something ideal and beautiful. That ‘s the meaning of the cover artwork
and that ‘s the meaning of our lyrics and music.
10.IF YOU HAD A PROPOSAL TO DO A VIDEOCLIP,
WHICH SONG OF YOURS WOULD YOU CHOOSE AND HOW DO YOU IMAGINE IT TO BE?
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We have already realized a video-clip.
The chosen song is “Something 2 Die 4” and the video shows
people demonstrating against G8 brutally repressed by the police. The video
is the bonus track of our EP and is downloadable from our web-site, too.
11.IF WE ARE ALL JUST A WORD IN THE
GREAT BOOK OF CREATION, CAN YOU SAY WHICH WORD COULD DESCRIBE YOU BETTER?
CAN YOU ALSO IMAGINE WHAT KIND OF AUTHOR WOULD BE THE CREATOR OF THIS BOOK
AND WHY?
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The word would probably be “FIGHT”,
but we don ‘t think there is an author of the book you mentioned: in our
mind, everyone is the author of his own life ‘s book.
12.IF YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO TRAVEL
BACK IN TIME, WHICH HISTORICAL PERIOD WOULD YOU LIKE TO VISIT AND WHY?
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We ‘d probably like to be Islamic warriors
during the crusades. Guess why.
13.DO YOU THINK THAT PERHAPS GOD GOT
SO FRIGHTNED FROM WHAT HE CREATED THAT HE MOVED TO HEAVEN IN ORDER TO KEEP
DISTANCE FROM HIS CREATIONS? :))
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We really don ‘t believe in God so
we don ‘t think he ‘s a good one and we don ‘t think even he ‘s a bad one.
We simply think he is not.
14.LET'S SUPPOSE THAT WE LIVE IN A
WORLD WITHOUT MUSIC. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN SUCH A CASE?
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We ‘d probably commit suicide.
15.IF YOU WERE A FLY, WHERE WOULD YOU
LIKE TO BE AND WHY?
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We ‘d like to be near those who rule
the world to listen unseen how they dispose of the world.
16.WHAT TITLE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOUR
CAREER?
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Our career has still not started and
we don ‘t know (even if we hope it) if it will ever happen so we cannot
give a title to something that still don ‘t exist. We ‘ll give a title
to our book when it will be finished if it will ever do.
17.THANK YOU! HAVE I FORGOTTEN TO ASK
YOU ANYTHING AND YOU'D LIKE TO MENTION?
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Your interview is really very exhaustive
and we don ‘t want to add anything but THANK YOU! Bye! MESCHALINA and MILITANT
crew.
Christine Parastatidou
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