Every year gives us new names in the metal stage. The last one was not the exception. It finally brought us the first full length release of Italian death metalers Ghouls. About the album, the plans and the tour with Holy Moses we talked with the bands guitarist Antonio Poletti.

Hello Antonio. First of all, let me congratulate you with your first full-length release. Could you tell us more about it?

Thanks, your compliments are very much appreciated. “Until it bleeds” was released by the end of November 2008 on the Italian label Despise the Sun. We recorded it at Outer Sounds Studios that are managed by Giuseppe Orlando (Novembre’s drummer): the album was conceived in six months and everyone in the band joined the whole process, we recorded it in May 2008 and its eight tracks are pure death metal.

The band has been existing for quite a long time, but released the first album only last year, what took you so long?

Actually the band exists from 1996 but we were often idle due to line up problems we’ve had to deal with all those years. During this time we’ve released 4 demos but those problems I was talking about prevented us from playing live or accurately promoting them, surely this complicated things a lot. Right now we’re over those times. We’ve got a solid line up and finally our first record came out.

What was the beginning of the band and how does the current line up look like?

Currently Ghouls are Massimiliano Franceschi on vocals, me, Antonio Poletti on guitar, Stefano Franceschini on bass and Claudio Testini on drums. Massimiliano started Ghouls in 1996, I’m in the band from 1998, Stefano and Claudio joined in the beginning of 2008.

There was quite a long hiatus in the band’s existence. What was the reason for it?

Max and me realized we needed a pause. So we decided to stop the band. There was no cooperation by the other guys in the band, neither in music nor in organization… It was difficult even to schedule a rehearsal! Until recently in Italy there wasn’t a big death metal scene and it was really hard to find the right people to play with, mostly if you wanted them to commit wholeheartedly. Luckily things are different now, and we wanted so much to play our music that we decided to reform the band, with Stefano and Claudio joining us.

What did you do during this pause?

There weren’t side projects to deal with, we dedicated our time to our private lives and silently kept on working around Ghouls

Do you listen to the music similar to what you play, or do you prefer listening to other kinds of music? What bands/music influenced you?

We all love death metal, we’ve always been fans and were interested in every form of its evolution. What we listen to the most now are bands like Nile, Necrophagist, Suffocation, Spawn Of Possession and many more. Obviously each of them influences us in one way or another, but we don’t want to lock ourselves in boundaries, especially when it comes to the music. We all have different tastes, i.e. I listen to bands like Motley Crue, Ratt to Ministry or Test Department, Claudio is fond of Folk metal bands and Max and Stefano love classical stuff.

Well, and do you experiment with your music?

In a way yes, we did and we do it now. We want our songs to sound different. However we don’t want to invent anything new, we only want to play death metal, plain and simple so we tried as much as possible to create our own style mostly working on the song’s arrangement and on more technical playing (actually this term sounds too pompous to me so I don’t like to use it!)

So, have the band’s music changed over the time?

Except for the musicians who previously played with us, I wouldn’t say many things have changed. I think we’ve evolved but maintained the same style. Surely the earlier songs may sound rough but not completely different from the new ones. We’ve always tried and basically wanted to preserve the essential nature of the original project, presenting a fast and aggressive sound.

I see. And what are we to expect from the Ghouls’ next albums?

We’re working on new material right now, we’ve already had three new songs ready. And what I can tell you is that they’re faster and more aggressive than ever.

Returning to “Untill it Bleeds”, are you totally satisfied with it?

Absolutely!

If given such a possibility, would you change anything?

We took care of every single detail of the album. The songs arrangement and the recording itself were entrusted to Giuseppe Orlando’s expert hands: thanks to him we’ve managed to obtain a sound that’s clean but powerful at the same time. The artwork (released by Fabio Listrani (STB01) who rendered exactly what we meant) and lyrics emphasise our ideas. No, we wouldn’t change a thing.

Has the album’s name any inspiration from Agathocles?

Honestly, Angathocles isn’t among my inspirations. The album’s title hedges in a single phrase the meaning of the whole work. Max’s lyrics talk about human sexual perversions, even dealing with torture, he’s very keen on Marquise De Sade.

Do you often play gigs? And have you already played abroad?

We’ve played several times live in Italy but never abroad. Now, with the new line up, we can promote the band and we really hope to play live as much as possible.

What do you think of supporting Holy Moses in the Eastern European tour?

It’s the biggest opportunity and a great pleasure for us to play with an all-time band as Holy Moses and I guess we’ll learn a lot from them.

How did you become a part of the support?

After the release of “Until it Bleeds” we got in touch with a lot of booking agencies to get to play live and finally The Flaming Arts replied with this tour. Nowadays there are a great number of bands, many of them are awesome, and being the one they chose makes us very proud.

Thank you for this interview, Antonio. I wish you a great tour and many new fans.

Thank you. We can’t wait to be there and play live. We hope all of the readers will come to see us live and will be aroused by our music. I also welcome everyone to our MySpace page to have a taste of what we sound like. See ya soon!

Quercus

21.03.2009