‘Deconstructive’ was released March 20th 2009 on the Lion Music label
– how has the reception been, and what kind of expectations do you have for it?
Onofrio
- Until
now the reception has been really excellent: this album is a reason for great
satisfaction for us.
Critically, we received dozens of enthusiastic reviews with high rates
everywhere, and the album is selling also a considerable amount of copies.
Daily we can see that the name of the band is growing: we receive a lot of
compliments by guys from every country and hundreds of visits in our website or
in our MySpace page. Our music player has doubled its listeners in 3-4 months,
with 60.000 new listening songs since the release date.
That’s great: the exposure has never been as high as now. Luckily, our label is
giving us a great promotional support and so, we try to use every channel to
make known our music and our name.
Another cause of satisfaction consists in the kinds of feed-back we’re
receiving: every person has his favourite songs; people love our song-writing,
our sound, our way to play the instruments, our lyrics.
It’s a pleasure to value that we have been able to express a so big range of
feelings and to touch the sensibility of so different people: guys that love
prog-metal, people more interested in thrash or melodic death metal, or that
like our persuasive atmospheres.
I think that we can find the roots of this result in the complexity of our music
proposal, always balanced by the aim to create true songs, with recognizable
verses, choruses and great melodies.
We have a lot of different colours, a huge amount of details, but never
forgetting the song-writing.
Our biggest hope consists to share our music with more people possible. We are
on the right direction.
If you had to chose
one song you feel represents Ashent, which song would you choose and why?
Onofrio
– Only
one song? I can’t answer. Deconstructive is a trip into several heterogeneous
levels: it is absolutely impossible to have a complete idea with 1 song. It
could be lost the pleasure of the surprise.
Probably there could be a song that can represent each main aspect of our
sound:”Imperfect”, or “Ephemera”, are good examples of our more melodic side.
“Spectral Vanity” could be an instance of our aggressive and extreme attitude
and songs like “Cassandra” or “Starlinked-innerness” represent a look into our
more progressive and epic language.
I don’t want to say that our music seems to be written by different bands: it’s
pretty easy to feel the common touch and the Ashent’s personality but it’s true
that we like to create different approaches.
When a band plays prog-metal rarely can or wants to base its proposal into the
shortages of one style: the concept of “single” badly fits with prog.
Of course, it’s always necessary to start from 1 song: in our case, we decided
to share with people Imperfect as first song, but the message wasn’t to offer a
representation of our album.
We wanted to light the evolution of our music, underlining the differences from
the typical sound of our debut album, Flaws of Elation that was mainly
aggressive and focused on fast tracks.
With Deconstructive we didn't want to meet necessary the expectations of the
Flaw of Elation’s fans.
Where do you see the main difference between this album and your
first album ‘Flaws of Elation’?
Davide
- Basically the Ashent trademark is the same, but the
second album is more refined and sounds like an evolution on our roots. We
worked a lot searching for the right sound and trying to combine a lot of
influences without changing our way of making and conception of music. The first
album is a sort of recollection of the band's first year’s material, so the
music is the result of different line-ups. Moreover it was a little heavier and
faster that the new one. When we started composing and rehearsing
"Deconstructive" we told each other that we didn't want to make a copy of "Flaws
of Elation". We checked all the weak points of the first release and we worked
on the new music trying to avoid walking on the same steps. Before starting
writing the material for "Deconstructive" we "promised" to our self not to lock
our musical feeling in a cage so as to let our creativity fly free during all
the process of composing (the song "To Develop Self-creativity" is a sort of
little manifesto of this approach).
I know labels are not popular among musicians, but I feel it is a
necessary evil to give people who haven’t heard your music before an idea of
what to expect from you. I have put the label Progressive Metal on your music
and described your music to be “a mixture between Dream Theater, Symphony X, In
Flames and Coheed and Cambria” – but how would you describe your music, and how
far off am I on the influences?
Onofrio
- Yes,
we don’t like labels, but I have also the honesty to say that, at the end, we
play prog-metal.
Of course, with our dose of personality and a certain specific style. We never
followed a famous band as a model: we don’t like to play in a similar way or to
have the same characteristics of a top-name.
In my opinion, we play a sort of mix where the most important influences come
from prog-music, with many techno-thrash elements and some melodic-death
references.
So, our songs have a heavier and darker attitude than a normal prog band but
also a lot of mellow elements and refined passages.
Comparing 2 songs like “Spectral Vanity” and “How Could it Feels Like This?”,
you can understand what I’m trying to explain: 2 different worlds, but it’s easy
to perceive the same vibe, a common taste developed to create particular
atmospheres.
Who has
produced and mixed the album? How does the final result compare to the idea you
had going into the studio?
Onofrio
- The
album has been produced by me and my brother Gianpaolo (the bass player),
supervised by the sound-engineer Luigi Stefanini in his famous New Sin studio.
We spent a lot of energies in order to create a great and personal sound: we
collaborated also with the Canadian Spectre-sound studio of Glenn Fricker, where
we studied our huge rhythmic guitar sound.
It has been a complex work, structured in different studios across the world,
but you can easily listen to the excellent result.
Deconstructive has an important production that everyone noted.
We are satisfied because, in practice, we followed every step of the process
deciding with our taste: from the first home-recording until the specific
details of the final mastering. Since the beginning, we had in our minds this
idea of a very aggressive and modern sound, with seven strings guitars, powerful
drums, and all these elements probably closer to bands like Nevermore or
Testament, mixed with refined acoustic guitars, melancholic pianos, vintage
keyboards and complex clean vocal’s harmonies, more linked to the prog and prog-rock
scene.
Often, people ask about the length of the studio’s period, thinking that we
spent months because our music is complex, well played and full of details but
I’ve to admit that the recording process has been always smooth, relaxed and
fast: usually we don’t spend more than a couple of weeks of effective
“tracking-days”, three- four days for each instrument.
The longest and most difficult parts of the process are the creation of the
sounds and the mixing process, but we balanced the necessity of time, with our
competence as sound-engineers we gained in these last years.
How did you come up with the title for the album?
Davide
- Every time is more difficult to choose the title for
the album than recording it! It's a sort of lottery! Usually everyone suggests a
couple of title he thinks summarize the whole album meaning. Then we vote for
the one we like more. Finally, the title that received more votes becomes the
one for the new album. About "Deconstructive" I can say that it's a technical
term taken from the architectural world and it comes from "Deconstructivism" a
word used to identify a group of architects of the seventies who started
revolutionizing the way of thinking about the built space. Following Deridda's
philosophy, they started projecting building which form is freed from Euclidean
geometry that represent the way of concepting order and space in our society. We
like a lot the meaning of this word and we think it fits very well our way of
thinking and making music. We don't want a "cube shaped" music. We want to let
our mind and creativity free to flow in every direction, without walls, floor
and roofs to link it.
Tell us a bit about artwork…
Davide
- The artwork for "Deconstructive" was realized by a
great young Spanish artist: Mario Sanchez Nevado. He made an incredible work !
He understood perfectly what we wanted for the new album booklet and developed
some images starting from the lyrics of the new songs, trying to translate into
emotive colours and concepts the emotions we wanted to give through music . More
over we take care of the graphical part of the package because we wanted to give
our fans a 360° artistic product. We hope everyone will enjoy the CD from every
point of view.
Ashent – any special story behind your name?
Davide
- The name of the band was changed just before starting
the recording of the first demo because the previous moniker was already used by
another band. The first version of the name was "Ashen" and the former guitar
player Thomas suggested the guys to ad a T at the end of it to make it sound
catchier. Basically the name didn't mean anything until we discovered that
Ashent is a word used by the American natives and means "union". The meaning
sounds good and synthesizes what's the spirit of our band.
Any touring plans – any festivals booked?
Onofrio – We want to do more live dates as possible in support
of the album, trying to move across the Europe and, in general, promoting
Deconstructive in the best way possible. We hope to be in tour during this next
winter.
Name the five musical pieces that you want to bring with you when we send you to
hell or heaven!
Onofrio
- Choosing
5 metal albums, in this moment I could say: Rust in Peace (Megadeth), Awake
(Dream Theater), The Sound of Perseverance (Death), The Perfect Element (Pain of
Salvation), Infinity (Devin Townsend).
Choosing 5 albums in general: Grace (Jeff Buckley), The Dark Side of the Moon
(Pink Floyd), A Night at the Opera (Queen), Hymn of the 7th Galaxy (Chick Corea),
The White Album (Beatles).
Davide
- I think everyone could reply differently to this
question. Personally I can say that it will be a hard challenge for me to choose
only 5 musical pieces of my collection. I think I'll try to pick up a piece for
each different kind of music I listen too, but also in this way I'll fail in
taking only 5 names . However, I think I'll pick up 5 basic album that changed
my life and my way of living into music: "Piece of Mind" - Iron Maiden because
it put me into heavy metal and make me know the magic of such a great band;
"Individual Thought Patterns" because this album changed the face of the extreme
music and my approach to the drum kit (thanx to Gene Hoglan); "Cogli la prima
mela" - Angelo Branduardi loosing me from listening only metal music; "Forse le
lucciole non si amano più" for making me know the sweetest side of the
progressive rock of the seventies; "The Four Seasons" - Antonio Vivaldi because
it's a timeless opus!
Thank you very much for answering my questions. Do you have any last rants for
our readers?
Onofrio -
Thank you for this interview, I want to greet all Power of Metal readers and
invite them to come to our gigs and to follow us on our site www.ashent.net, or
on the official MySpace page.
Stay Metal
