Soon after the release their impressive new record “Carnis Tempora: Abyssus” and their brief Winter tour with the band named O, Italian extreme metallic hardcore beast LAMANTIDE (est. 2009) team up with IDIOTEQ to talk about some of the exciting aspects behind their dark art, politics, current migrant crisis, the recent terrorist attacks, and, of course, their plans for the future.
LAMANTIDE‘s forceful record “Carnis Tempora: Abyssus” is out now on Shove Records, Epidemic Records, Zegema Beach Records, Dingleberry records and distribution, Frammenti Di Un Cuore Esploso, Icore Produzioni, Black Fire Rec., Here And Now Records, and Cave Canem D.I.Y. Join its absolutely massive, both frighteningly intense and indescribably uplifting experience below.
Catch the band live at Happy New Deep Fest in in Trezzo sull’Adda, Italy.
Photo: Francesco de Palma.
Hey there guys! Thanks so much for taking some time with IDIOTEQ! How are you?
Very good! Thanks for yout interest in our work!
Your newest record “Carnis Tempora: Abyssus” comes out 5 years after your debut self-titled record. What took you so long to put together these 15 minutes of death metallic post hardcore rage? Tell us a bit about your beginnings and the path from 2009 to where you are today.
The band started as you said at the end of 2009. One of the major influences was surely CONVERGE, for their sound and their “borderless” approach to hardcore. After the publishing of our first record there were some changes in the lineup: the whole rhythm section changed and it took about one year for us to reach our actual and definitive lineup. New members means new influences, so we added more elements and refined some aspects of our sound, that’s still heavy but now a little slower and more focused. In addition we played a lot of shows and that helped us improving our proposal. Playing in front of an audience is a good test bench and sharing the stage with some really cool bands is a useful comparison that surely give us the chance to grow.
As we reach our ultimate shape we felt the need to put out a record that reflected the new band’s balance. We wrote every song all together without a specific goal, discarding what didn’t 100% convince us and keeping the ideas that sounded stronger. The result is our new EP “Carnis Tempora: Abyssus”
What’s the concept of “Carnis Tempora: Abyssus” and how does this amazing artwork reflect your artistic ideas or message you send through your lyrics?
All the components (music, lyrics and artwork) of our EP are bounded by a concept: we focused on the idea of alchemical process as a metaphor of the discovering ourselves through the study of outer world and the consciousness of our inner nature. It’s like a travel: the first stage of human life is childhood and the first stage of initiatory path is called Negredo and is symbolized by a crow and its color is black. Here’s our artwork explained!
The front cover illustration was realized by Gozer Visions, an amazing Italian artist.
What was it that began your interest in alchemy, science, and Carl Gustav Jung?
Alchemy is a very fascinating subject and it’s been heavily used in the extreme music’s imaginary. But usually people stops to the outward appearance: goats, demons, pentacles… kind of a cheap Satanism.
We wanted to explore the argument more deeply, finding connection with other subjects. In this sense CG Jung work on alchemy was very interesting: He found a lot of analogies between alchemy and his theory of subconscious… as the alchemists start their metaphorical journey from vile metal, the human being starts building his own thinking from some symbols Jung called “archetypes”.
There are also some lessons that are useful even in everyday life: the allegory of the Philosopher’s stone, for instance, symbolizes the infinitive research, the continues work on ourselves to improve day after day.
Having created this new piece of work, and discovered some symbolism and knowledge within these concepts, have you finished exploring it for now? Or are you still very eager to have a better knowledge of these theories and expand your observations on your future recordings?
No, we haven’t finished yet. This is maybe the main core of our EP: for LAMANTIDE it’s been in a certain way a second birth, so we don’t see this as a concluded work; it’s the beginning rather than the end of an experience. Again: the first leg of the journey.
We don’t know if there will be a “Carnis Tempora”’s sequel, or if we will return to this topic in the future but we will surely prosecute with the spirit that has characterized this record: research (on both musical and conceptual side), curiosity, reflection and the will not to self-impose limits.
How would you describe your artistic point of view? What do you hope to communicate through your work and such concept works?
We didn’t have a clear communicative intent when we start to work on the record, the concept too was built “day by day”. We think that, apart from the contents, the sole choice to play a certain kind of music (with all of its background), to take decisions related to your life in first person, not to delegate to anyone else, to follow on supporting the DIY practices it’s the biggest and most important message we could communicate through our music.
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Ok guys, how about some politics? Do you follow current event? Do you think right-wing politicians will have a majority in the next European elections? How do you evaluate the recent wave of such tendencies, approach and right wing extremism that expanded significantly over this year?
Maybe they won’t have the majority, but for sure far-right parties will increase their popularity. After all it’s a long-term process that didn’t begin with the recent “crisis” bounded to the arrival of refugees from Northern Africa and then from Syria.
The western capitalist system is essentially based on the exploitation of manhood and nature, and it’s regulated by fear, first of all the fear to lose our privileges. So in historical moments characterized by uncertainty like the one we’re living right now people who can control fear and provide a scapegoat for all bad things ends up gaining consent.
The absurd is that there’s a lot of people that let himself persuade that their enemies are the poorer ones and not the ones who detain power and determine their life.
What does Europe need to solve the migrant crisis and combat terrorism?
Europe won’t be able to do nothing to improve their situation or the one of the rest of the planet, neither they won’t solve any “crisis” until we don’t recognize that “terrorism” is not just an attack to a restaurant in Paris or a blast in the London subway. Bombing Baghdad is terrorism; destabilize and balkanize the middle-east area to weaken the regimes we don’t like is terrorism; stealing oil and gas from Nigeria without any positive relapse on the local people who only suffer from this exploitation is terrorism. Financing the various war-lords all over the world (the name Osama Bin Laden don’t remind you of nothing?) is terrorism; making impossible for millions of people to have a decent instruction, a wealthy food, a job….well this is terrorism.
We must first of all face our responsibilities.
How about Italy? Do you believe there are some economic and political experiences of your country that could be suitable and applicable in other countries? How healthy are Italian constitutionalism and politics these days? What’s life like for you down there?
Italy’s economic situation is not the best at all: there were in the last years an incredible growth of unemployment, especially between youth. The “official” politic is an ill system that only thinks about itself.
The scariest thing is that the left-oriented parties and trade unions are at their historic lows and from the “palaces of politic” – as we say – don’t came a credible answer; the extra-parliamentary groups who were very strong some decades ago don’t seem to be able to represent an alternative. Unfortunately the only groups that are growing up are right-oriented, racist and populistic parties like for example the infamous “Lega Nord”.
Ok guys, back to the band. What is the future of LAMANTIDE? Will there be some live shows in the nearest future? Tell us about your plans for the next year.
For sure .We just got back from a little European tour alongside our friends O (circular Sign – check them out, they’re amazing!!) during which we hit Austria, Switzerland, France and Germany and we’ve got some good shows already booked in Italy. We think that the live dimension is the one that fits best to our music so we want to play on a stage as much as we can.
In the meantime we’re working on some new stuff; we like our creative moment and we want to make the most of this period to write new material.
What artists did you follow this year? Do you mind sharing your ‘best of 2015’ summary with us? Feel free to go beyond music and tell us about other pieces of art that caught your eyes.
We love a lot of very different stuff, in music and other form of arts. So it would be difficult to fill in a band’s “best of” chart.
We would like to say to your readers to follow the Italian scene; there’s a lot of very good bands coming out these years with some remarkable works.
Thanks a lot for your thoughts! It’s been a pleasure. The last words are yours!
Listen to new band’s records, go to concerts, start your own band: more volume, less bullshit!!
(Seriously…just few words to send a huge thanks to all the people involved in this project and especially the labels that helped us printing the EP: Epidemic (whose owner Gab is an old friend and the mean for this interview too), Shove, Zegema Beach from Canada, Dingleberry from Germany, Frammenti di un Cuore Esploso, Black Fire, Here and Now, Icore, Cave Canem. It’s mainly for the true dedication that people like this put in what they do that hardcore is still alive.)
