• What do Violator tell us?
• "Trust your self...(and nobody else)"

• Of course the date of the Violator's birth. It was March 1997.Then the date of our first demo release, it was on February 1998 when we published a demotape called "Blood flows in the Abyss",it was composed by 5 songs. NWOBHM oriented with a particular Iron Maiden style influence. We had some good reviews and it was a special satisfaction because that work was made very quickly, the recording session was totally made in a day! After that demo we had many concerts all around our city while we were composing new songs, with a different style.We changed our style from a Classic Heavy Metal to Classic Power Metal. Songs, more power and strong on riffs and choruses. In September 2000 we started to record our second demo "Synthesis of Opposites" and on February 2001, the demoCd was ready to be reviewed from many magazines and webzines.
• The actual line up is:
• Michele Guzzini - Guitars;
• Vittorio Bonifazi - Guitars;
• Daniele Tiberi - Bass;
• Roberto Cardinali - Drums;
• You can see that we are looking for a new Singer at the moment...

2.WHY HAVE YOU NAMED THE BAND VIOLATOR? WHAT'S THE CONNECTION WITH YOUR MUSIC? HOW IMPORTANT DO YOU THINK IS THE CORRECT CHOICE OF A BAND NAME?

• Violator is a character of the famous Spawn saga comic and when we chose it we were looking for a name that will sound good, heavy metal, to give the right feeling with our music. Violator is also a very violent character in this comic, and we are sure we were influenced from our most favourite band IRON MAIDEN who have EDDY like a symbol of their music. We think that the name is very important but not necessarily the most important thing in a band. So when you choose a monicker u have to fill it with your music's style features.

• Now at this moment we are playing Power Metal, our style is not much complexed because we love direct music,we also like technical bands like Dream Theater or Stratovarius or others but we like to give to who is listening our music the right feeling at the first time, we want to find the right way to enter in the mind of the listener quickly, with good riffs and impressive choruses. Arrangements and instrumental parts are important to us, we like to work hard for every single song we compose, we don't like to write quickly. Our influences are Stratovarius, Gamma Ray, Hammerfall, Labyrinth...but we don't forget Iron Maiden. I think that when you listen to our songs you can feel these influences...Naturally tha band that gave us the right spirit to start to play music is Iron Maiden, which song? I don't remember a specific song.

4.FILL US IN ON THE BAND RELEASES. TELL US A FEW THINGS ABOUT THE RECORDINGS, THE MSUIC, THE PRODUCTION...ARE YOU STILL SATISFIED WITH THEM?

• We have 2 demos, the first one "Blood flows in the Abyss" was recorded in 1998, the second was recorded in 2000. We had good releases, not maximum, but we felt satisfied because it was recorded in one day. We played live those five songs and the final result was quite good. But in the second demo we decided to make something more professional, we spent 15 days in studio; the result is very good. The music is different, because the first demo was heavy metal and the second was Power Metal. We used stronger riffs and stronger vocal lines. The production is good, but we are sure that we can do better things, it was our first "semiprofessional recording session"...

5.ARE YOU PREPARING A NEW ALBUM? HAVE YOU COMPOSED ANY NEW SONGS? WOULD YOU EVER CONSIDER TO CHANGE MUSICAL DIRECTION AND EXPERIMENT IN ANOTHER KIND OF METAL?

• Yes, we are preparing our new demoCd, we will compose 5 or 6 songs and choose 4 to put in the demo. This time we want to choose the best of our songs, we have 1 song ready. When u play for many years it's easy to change something in ur music, the influences are many and if u change members in the group is more easy to do that; But we are also sure that we don't want to change tha base of our music, we want to play Classic Power Metal, no death, no grind, no black, no new, nothing other!

6.WHAT DIFFICULTIES HAVE YOU FACED ALL THIS TIME? DID THEY HELP YOU BECOME STRONGER OR WAS THERE A TIME YOU WANTED TO QUIT?

• Difficulties are always everywhere, the important thing is to have the strenght to go over them. We live in a small town and there aren't many people who play our kind of music, so there aren't many musicians to choose to build a good band, this is the first example of difficulties. We want to play music that has also a keyboard but we couldn't find a good musician for us, this is another big problem. But we always had the strenght to continue. In our last demo a friend of us helped us to write keyboard lines and he played in the demo. But he's not a member of Violator. We don't want to quit, if we will quit i m sure it will be because it's the only thing we could do.

7.WHICH IS THE BEST AND WHICH IS THE WORST REVIEW YOU'VE EVER RECEIVED?

• The best review we received was made by Gianluca Grazioli of www.metal.it, but there is another one very good review, made by Alessio Oriani of Metal Shock magazine and Rot'n'Roll webzine. The worst was made by Mirko Montalbano of Metallo Italiano webzine. You can read every review on our site http://members.xoom.it/Maicol22/aboutviolator.htm

• We want to promote our music in every possible way, sending the promo to many magazines, webzines, fanzines and labels. We also want to play live our songs wherever we have the possibility.

9.WHAT ARE YOUR LYRICS TALKING ABOUT? DO YOU WRITE ABOUT REAL LIFE OR IMAGINARY SITUATIONS? WHAT INSPIRES YOU AND WHAT TAKES AWAY THE INSPIRATION?

• There isn't only one way about our lyrics style. It depends on our ispiration, our songs are fantastic and realistic too. If a member of our band wants to write some lyrics he can, because there isn't only one writer. the inspiration comes from our real life, what we think and what we see about this world and this life; we can write about it with fantastic or realistic style, but the basic is real.

• Italy in this moment is full of metal bands, there are many power metal bands, but i can say there aren't many good bands. Maybe labels and producers should choose better who has the real opportunity to go on, i say that because i know many bands, i have listened to many italian bands but i can say that there aren't bands that i like very much like bigger bands. I m proud to be a member of the italian underground scene; i know that our band like other italian bands have to thank bands like Rhapsody and Labyrinth that started to play italian metal music over the world.

11.COULD YOU NAME SOME OTHER BANDS FROM YOUR COUNTRY THAT YOU FIND TO BE VERY INTERESTING?

• Rhapsody, Labyrinth, Vision Divine, Secret Sphere, Lacuna Coil...

12.IF SOMEDAY YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO MEET THE CREATURE THAT CREATED THE UNIVERSE, WHICH WOULD YOUR BIGGEST QUESTION BE?

• I don't know! Maybe the only question is "Why  have you created this world?"

13.MANY METAL MUSICIANS ACCUSE POP STARS FOR THEIR LIFE STYLE, YET WE SEE SUCH BEHAVIOURS IN THE METAL SCENE AS WELL (BANDS PAYING TO MAKE A COVER FOR SUCCESFUL MAGAZINES, HAVING A GOOD REVIEW, METAL LABELS PROMOTING SPECIFIC BANDS AND GENRES EACH EPOCH,ETC).IS IT MAYBE AFTER ALL TRUE THAT THE METAL INDUSTRY DOESN'T DIFFER FROM THE POP? WHICH ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THAT?

• I don't know very well but i m sure that all magazines, tv and media in general have the power to make a band famous as they want and what people have to listen and to choose to buy. I don't like very much this kind of music world. We are listening, every day, very bad songs of very bad bands, but they have all the popularity they want; i don't know why. Many many good bands couldn't become popular like them because labels and media think they are not good...

14.IF TIME TRAVEL WAS POSSIBLE, WHICH HISTORICAL PERIOD WOULD YOU LIKE TO VISIT AND WHY? WHAT WOULD YOU MISS THE MOST FROM OUR TIME?

• Middle Ages, because i like that kind of life, and i feel there is much interest and mistery in it.

15.WHAT PROLOGUE AND TITLE WOULD YOU LIKE THIS INTERVIEW TO HAVE?

• The prologue and the title? Mmm...hard question. Prologue: "Trust your self...(and nobody else)", like the title of one of our songs. Title "The power of metal", maybe.

• No, i think u didn't forget anything, i hope we have answered as good as your questions were. Thank you Christine.