Disclaimer: I was a kid when I wrote this so please withhold any judgements on quality :)
Novembre has always been a special band. From arctic landscapes to scorching deserts, the Italian four piece manage to convey an amazing sense of atmosphere without resorting to any of the dramatic cheesiness of a cliche metal band.
Firstly Carmelo, congratulations on another quality release.
Thanks a lot mate!
Was there a specific concept or idea you guys had in mind when writing songs for The Blue?
Not really. But thinking again, this blue/cobalt picture was always in my mind. Who knows how these things work.
Recently Novembre have been booked for a tour across the UK in support of Paradise Lost, what expectations do you have from the tour and most importantly are you excited!!!?
Absolutely. We are supporting the most important band of the post-Death Metal age, the founders of the Gothic-Doom scene. It’s such an honour for us. They’re A class people, really kind, down to Earth and helpful guys. Killer tour indeed!
For a while now, I’ve been hearing talk about a possible dvd release, has any progress been made with this idea?
I think it’s way too early for an official dvd. Things have their right time to be done. We’ll probably do it later on.
Starting a band with your brother Giuseppe and creating music for nearly seventeen years isn’t something every band has the benefit of experiencing, how is it making music together and being in the band with a family member for this long?
Well, everything gets easier if your able to establish a professional relationship. Which is hard at times, but we’re grown up man. We can handle it. There’s a great side about that, we have the same musical roots and we often understand each other better than with other members of the band
It’s an unrecognised truth that you and your brother are some of the early pioneers of the atmospheric Doom sound and this is something which I feel you don’t get enough credit for, especially since you were only seventeen at the time. What were your influences at the time?
You’re right about that. At the very beginning I was 16 and my bro was 13.
What you mentioned is true, but just partially. We think it’s caused by a few factors such as: we got signed too late, or the unfortunate events, which caused the loss of too much time between “Novembrine Waltz” and “Materia”.
Things like that!
Then, journalists don’t do their job properly. Many don’t know shit about the underground in general, what it used to be, the bands it was made of, and the whole environment we come from. Others know but forgot, others don’t even read the bio-sheet they get with the promo-packages their given.
We were born in 1990’s, the most indoctrinated Death Metal scene. We had the luck to have older friends, who were tape traders and already run an underground fanzine so we basically knew every single non-mainstream band on Earth and every single demo released since 1984, ON TAPE! Our biggest influences at the time were early Napalm Death, Death, Carcass, Pestilence, Morbid Angel, Entombed and Swedish company: Bolt Thrower, Treblinka/Tiamat, Grotesque/At The gates and… Paradise Lost, just to mention bands your readers might have heard about. Well, beneath all that hell, when PL released their “Gothic” album, something in our perception of music changed for good. And I think it has changed for many other dudes, if you know what I mean!
I personally find it amazing that you can create a sound which seems so “scenic”, I literally feel like I am on a journey when I hear any of your albums.
I know what you mean. To create a soundscape, is every musician’s goal. Pretty hard to achieve though, thanks!
I’ve always been curious about why you chose the name Novembre?
If we had a FAQ, that’d definitely be the number one :)
Back then, around ‘92/93, the scene was really overcrowded with emotional-Death-Metal wannabes. All the My Dying Bride’s clones were popping out from everywhere and we needed a change. We absolutely wanted to avoid a dull name. When I came out with this idea, we were a bit afraid people would be like “an Italian name? Fuck you”… But something told me it was worth the risk. That name was so similar to its English equivalent that the odds another band would come out with the same idea were about zero. Then for some mysterious reason, this name, when kept in Italian, has an amazing sonance, which gets a bit lost in its English equivalent. So it just worked out.
Lyrically, Novembre always use are really interesting themes. Something that has annoyed me about metal is the tendency to stick to cliché lyrical themes such as aggression or violence. I read in an older interview that you have previously used lyrics and words more for their sound, than for their literal meanings. Is this true of your newest record?
True indeed! I need to express concepts and hide them a bit, and I need beautiful words to do that. Well, the world speaks English and since the abuse of this language, it has become really hard to find nice words others haven’t used. So I need to make up new words or use non-English languages, such as French, German, Italian, Latin… or even mix them. None of these languages are really far from yours anyway, so you’ll still have a clue about the meaning of those words. It’s a way to vary things a bit.
As you’ve done a few international tours, how well known is Novembre overseas and abroad? Are there any places you would like to still visit?
The US would be killer or course! Well Peaceville is putting hell of an effort to support this album and we’re receiving a lot of attention lately. We’ll see what happens!
Novembre’s earliest albums are quite difficult to find, have you any plans to re-release any of your albums under your current record label?
That’d be a future option for sure! Reprinting requires a cost and we need to establish our name to do that.
A routine question I always like to ask is what are the chances of you guys ever playing in New Zealand? I’ve been waiting a long time now!
I dunno man, we only played in EU till now, so… let’s cross our fingers!
Thanks again for allowing us some insight into Novembre and I hope the show on the 30th goes well!
Thanx.
By Jimmy Ness