Can you please give us a brief history of your band, Decadence ?
The band was born definitely in the spring of 2001, from the ashes of a Death band called “Devastate”. The two projects of Sinyus and Tiorad gathered to create something bigger, musically wider and more interesting at all. Though the first compositions were still close to the Death sound, the entering in the band of Vitriol, Samiel and Kyrion gave to Decadence the chance to increase dramatically the possibilities and the inner skills of all the band. The influences from prog, jazz and classic music practiced by all the members together defined the style in something that later, during the recordings of the mini cd “Theatre of Eclipse” would be definitely called as Obscure Metal.We can see that the fast growing up of the band were due most of all to the wonderful magic created between the members (we’re much more than brothers) either when writing the music and when performing on stage.

You have described your music as ‘Obscure Metal’ and not Symphonic Black/Death metal. Was the term coined by you ? Why do you call it so ?
We decided to create the term Obscure when we understood the musical direction of “Theatre of Eclipse”. We noticed that our music were going far from the simple symphonic extreme sound, and that we had from the beginning big interest in progressive and fusion styles. To keep clearness in the band’s design, we needed to concentrate all this musical mix in one name, and since there was no band (we knew) in the world with such properties, we had to invent a proper name for our music.The result comes from the colour of our atmospheres first, but also from the ideas and the concepts we want to illustrate in our works.

Tell us something about the debut album ‘Theatre Of Eclipse’. The concept behind the album and the name, ‘TOE’ ?
Starting from the name, we wanted to set the listener inside an open space (the Theatre) in which takes place one of the most interesting events of the universe (the Eclipse).During all the phase of the Eclipse the listener travels through different and parallel journeys: the inner voyage, in which he can walk beyond the walls of appearance to reach the dimension of its real existence, while out of him there are the physical and metaphysical consequences of the Eclipse, the outer voyage, that here is seen as a palingenetic event (in the last movement we see that the eclipse carries a new day and a new reality) and has not only an astronomical meaning. We thought it could well represent the passage of our collective spirit from a life to another one (that’s why “E.C.L.I.P.S.E.” means “every change lives in previous spirit’s existence”) collecting experiences and learning from them to improve more and more, in a kind of eternal aiming (from here the movement “The Infinite Aiming”).This process can produce either wonders of the nature but also horrible representations of the inner poverty if we go down our mental abysses.

Your music is greatly influenced by the Cosmic and celestial topics which is evident from the songs and lyrics. Who writes the lyrics and where do you draw your inspiration to write such songs?
The lyrics, as the music, are the result of hours and hours spent together around and table with the ideas of all of us. When we start creating music we already have a base concept and even some sentences we wrote down to keep mind on it, but the lyrics are generally written at the end of the musical work. So we can think step by step how to explain in words what we thought in music.Everyone gives his ideas and then talking and talking we decide the exact words of the lyrics.About the inspiration, we are very interested in philosophical and metaphysical arguments, from the classical occidental thought to the oriental doctrines.We like to see Obscure Metal then as a synthesis of the two thesis and antithesis of the Hegelian thought, here seen as the classic extreme divisions of metal and his new and eclectic tendencies.

Your debut is a self release. Did any labels approach you to sign you up? Has any labels shown interest in your work ?
We decided to separate the promoting phases after releasing the cd, so we first sent copies to mags and zines (with very good response) and now we’re going to concentrate on the labels, in the hope of a deal for the next album and live tour.For labels, we produced a promotional video called “Decadence: First Year of Eclipse” with live extracts and interviews to the members in order to describe better and clearer the spirit of the band, the attitude, the skills and the hard-working time spent during the first year of Decadence.

How is the response from your country ? Are there fans for your kind of music ? How is the metal music scene in Italy ?
We found a lot of interested people in here, especially going through the virtual communities in internet and finding them in the locations we’re performing.I have to say that the Italian metal scene is still suffocated by the non-metal genres and by the lack of structures able to host a metal concert. Anyway, there are lot of interesting metal bands and some of them could even break through in Europe and in the world (Lacuna Coil for example).

Your website and the cover art of the CD is really very good. Could you tell us more about these? How designed them ?
In the band we’re all very interested into graphics and design, in every artistic and multimedia product we want to put the same coherence and elegance you can find in the cd look.We like very much working on images and photo to obtain dark and gloomy visual sensations.It’s the only way to fulfil the message we try to transmit in our music and words.

Are you working on a follow up album? If yes, please give us some details.
Yes, we’re working on it since we finished “Theatre of Eclipse”.This follow up will be probably the full length debut album, and will be the second chapter of the Decadence book. After the concept of “Theatre of Eclipse” we’re composing a more structured concept (we already have a title but it’s still secret). The only thing I can say now is that we’re going to get back the great opus of a Latin poet to interact with his visions of the world. We’re playing live some little extract to check the audience response, because the new tracks are quite different from the old ones and we want to define the Obscure style onto this new compositions. Anyway the crowd is always happy so we think it’s the right way to go on.

Any tours, gigs for promotion of your album?
We’re planning an italian tour as headliners for this spring, from north to south Italy… by now, we’re getting contacts to have live performances here and there with other bands of the underground scene.

Any messages for the fans in India?
We hope, after this brief presentation of what Decadence are in the metal world, a lot of people will be interested in Obscure Metal, or maybe will be trying to know it better.. We’d like to expand our genre everywhere, opening discussions on what this style could be in the future and making metal heads listen to something different.To make this, you can visit our official website at www.obscuremetal.com and then keeping in touch with us by decadence@obscuremetal.com we will reply to everyone, so.. thanks to MetalIndia and… we’re waiting for you all!

Interview By : METALINDIA (metalindia@yahoo.com)