BLOOD RED WATER interview

BLOOD RED WATER is a doom/sludge/stoner metal band from Venezia, Italy. On May 31st, 2012 we conducted an interview with Fiorica (drums), Volt (guitars), Dodi (guitars) and Mick (vocals).  Do yourself a favour  and check these guys out .

Hi. Please to meet you, guys. Please introduce your pack to our readers.

Mick:

Hi, y’all! BLOOD RED WATER is a doom/sludge group from Venice, band was formed in the summer of 2010 by Fiorica and me, just after followed by Volt. United by the passion of, doom and sludge BLOOD RED WATER has the purpose of playing whatever’s in the members’ hearts; we never follow a set pattern but the inspiration. At the end of 2011 we did our debut EP “Tales of addiction and despair” (recorded at The Flameout Studio) and the creature is available as a free download and a ‘pure spirit of DIY’ physical release. It has received some good reviews.
 BLOOD RED WATER’s current lineup consists of Fiò at the drums, Volt at the guitar; Dodi at the guitar and myself as singer.

What part of Venice do you come from? Please don’t tell me that you live in a beautiful old flooded building and simply jump out of the window straight to you … every time you want to gofor a date [laughs].

Mick:

Cool! Ok, I’ll t tell you now…
Forget the black lagoon or a haunted Venetian gothic style hotel, man! We live in the province of Venice and our practice room (the band’s birthplace) is located in Porto Marghera, an industrial gloomy disused area that necessarily inspired us. It’s clear that we all love Venice, is an amazing and fascinating city. Good food and good wine, what more could you ask for?

Nice one. What are your origins as musicians? What other bands have you played in?

Fiò:

I started playing guitar cos I loved NIRVANA and I wanted to play their songs at my own, then I moved on electric guitar adopted a heavier sound and I started to writing original songs. I played with a good deal of local metal bands. Afterwards I played bass but it bored me, so I chose to play drums.

Dodi:

Same here cos I started playing guitar and singing NIRVANA songs in a band with friends of mine. I played with Rein and actually I play in a band called ELECTRIC FROG CONSPIRACY besides BRW.

Volt:

My first experience playing an instrument was when I was young. I studied a little classical piano, but I didn’t like it so much.
 Then several years later a friend of mine asked me to join his band, named REIN, as bassist.
I really loved to play bass.
 REIN played a rock/alternative music and all the songs were written by us. This really helped me to understand metrics and structures of the songs.
My story in this band continued for about three years and during it I started also to sing some parts..
 After some experiences as singer (NEW NIGHTMARE (trash metal), CRASH A PARTY (funky punky) and ONE DECA DC (punk), in 2007 I joined Mr Boonekamp as guitarist and singer and still now I’m playing with this band.
 I have to thanks Ketto, guitarist and vocal of ONE DECA DC and now bassist of TALCO, cause he taught me something more about how to play guitar and music in general.
 Almost two years ago I joined the BLOOD RED WATER with Fiorica and Michele and this is my first experience as only guitarist.
This is the occasion to express myself in acid tripping riffs and cavernous and sludgy sound and experiment new distortion mix of pedals and equalization guided by a stoned trip.

Mick:

I’ve a grindcore/crust background as singer in three local band (one of these N.A.B. was an adrenalin purest grind/core blow) and I’ve always written my bands lyrics, writing is a weird trip inside myself. Totally love it.

Tell us something about your local music scene, venues, booking crews, etc. Is Venice kind for bands like BLOOD RED WATER?

Fiò:

There isn’t a huge doom scene here, few bands and few followers, maybe now it is becoming more popular but metal and punk/hardcore scene rules the roost. In Italy instead there are many good doom bands and good bands of different genres.

You released your debut EP in the end of 2011. Tell us about the process of writing and recording it.

Mick:

We spent our first year as a band playing and writing the music we love in the vibe we feel. We aren’t fast writers but we love to do it. Our music is played (still now!) without thinking too much about the difference between genres or what people like. Sometimes we were more focused on doom, other times it came the stoner mood, there are so many inspirations…and the final result is blended in the BLOOD RED WATER style: monoholitic drums, harsh guitars and hopeless feeling from a smoky room.
 Picked up the best 5 strings/songs off our bow, we did our first EP in December at The Flameout Studio, they did a great job! It has been an interesting experience. As I said, Tales of Addiction and Despair is a DIY product but recording is professional and we paid attention to the sound working. It’s so important. The EP title, found by Fiorica, explains what most of the songs are talking about. It’s absolutely not a concept but a sick halo of addiction surrounds all the lyrics and music too. It comes naturally from me and the band and we liked it. I use to say that BLOOD RED WATER is a strong lighthouse in my life and playing and creating our own notes is brilliant.

There are so many great reviews of the outing. They say you developed your own unique sound within the genre, How was it received and how do you see it from your perspective? 

Mick:

Good reviews make us happy but we respect who feels a bit “caught off the guard” because you can listen a super low doom song like Ungod followed by a stoner song with a catchy garage attitude like Avoid the Relapse and they are both BLOOD RED WATER 101%. You can hear hardcore influences in the fast parts, we know it.
 We belong to no particular style in this ocean of sub genres. Simply we do what we want to, what inspired us, always thinking to develop our own sound. To me an album has got its musical direction but an EP can have more variety and you can heard the same variety we found when we were writing Tales of Addiction. Probably we’ll have to think about our direction in the future, by the way, in our view we are proud of it and the sound result is good. Heavy and sludgy but it’s not for me to say, you turn listeners! Crank it up!

It was free of charge, which is completely normal these days. Nevertheless, are you still hoping to somehow live off music in the future? It would tell us a lot about the band’s attitude and sense of existence.

Mick:

I agree, but here in Italy we have to cope with the real situation, this means that we strongly believe in our music being realistic, down to earth and who knows….

How many gigs have you been playing so far? What are your plans to conquer the Old Continent? [smiles]

Mick:

Around ten, I don’t remember exactly, but we never did a tour, just selected dates. We figure to do some live dates in autumn. Our concert plans were still cos Volt, the riff maker/feedback junkie is suffering by a wrist inflammation. By the way, we’ll have a gig after the break at the end of June with a lot of bands…hot news!

How do you book your shows? Is it a struggle? Are there particular online tools, services, DIY crews or booking agencies friendly for BLOOD RED WATER?

Volt:

The great part of our shows comes out through a big PR and promotion activity through web tools and personal contacts. we have to thanks the other bands of the scene cause they call us to share events and play together in a sludgy night. Happens really often that similar bands contact and help each other we have an empty day in a tour trip.
Also stoner and sludge fans that appreciate our sound, available online for listening and download, have written us some messages via Facebook asking for live shows and proposing also some locations and dates.
When most use Facebook to reach the public sharing links, reviews, videos and download pages.
At moments the contacts with agency and services have been really few, rather zero, so we rolled up our sleeves to find out live performances.
On the other hand we are also trying to gain more visibility on the scene and, taking into account that in Veneto is really popular metal, we are little by little obtain a place in a niche of this scene.
Anyway yes, It’s a struggle!
Maybe something should change soon…we hope it!

Music industry changed a lot over the years. It’s killing lots of mainstream bands. On the other hand, it’s a great opportunity for local acts and alternative artists. How do you promote the band besides performing live and releasing studio tracks? What ways of reaching broader audience do you find attractive for a band a.d. 2012?

Volt:

This is a really interesting question that open a lot of shades in a hypothetic answer. For sure the music industry changed the way to promote bands and the CD market lost revenues, the web visibility became the most important way to share music.
So in order to stay in line with the market we decide to produce an EP rather well done with a good sound and high level of recording all by ourselves. The other decision is share the album for free and try to reach all the community, pages, radio and bands that are involved/interested in the genre. We used all the web tools at low cost available in order to gain as much visibility as possible. Now we are looking forward to reap the benefits.
We think that in 2012 this is the right way to promote ourselves and consequentially to find out live shows at Italian and maybe European level (we don’t have so much money to point towards an higher objective).
We had some interesting feedback with several comments and contacts by fans and other bands and also a lot of positive and helpful reviews.
 In some years I think we should answer better to this question but now a lot of ideas and thoughts invade my brain (piracy, copyright, SIAE, public body, audience,…too many things too many words) so I decide to answer in line with the question. Finally we smoke weed to promote BLOOW RED WATER better.

Fiò:

Becoming known through internet is surely easier and faster now than years ago, we’ve sent our EP to many blogs and webzine for review, Tales of Addiction and Despair is available as free download for anyone who wants to listen to. This way gave us visibility and the possibility of being known. We are just at the beginning.

What other happenings are coming up next for the band?

Mick:

First of all we have to cement a solid line up (we are looking for a bass player!) I have to mention Lorenzo from Gli Sportivi and D. from MR. BOONEKAMP as our additional bass player, (Lorenzo played in the EP). Then we are writing new stuff , the last song we did it’s pretty insane. And it’s a moment of change. There’s something brewing, quoting Ray Bradbury concerning BLOOD RED WATER “Something Wicked This Way Comes”. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, we keep on promoting “Tales and Addiction and Despair”.

Right after Fluff Fest 2011, I’ve travelled through northern parts of your country, spent some time over at Lake Garda and tiny western villages including such tourist attractions like Riomaggiore and Monterosso al Mare. I have to admit it was an amazing adventure. To be honest, Venice didn’t caught my attention so much, but still… some places were just wonderful. Oh, and there was the worst pizza in the whole country [laughs]. What places in Italy would you recommend the most?

Mick:

The Lake Garda Region is fascinating as The Cinque Terre, it may seem an exaggeration to say that there are many many places, villages, museums, arts all lover Italy. But it’s true. I wanna suggest you a nice restaurant in the shore of Lake Bolsena, a volcanic origin lake of central Italy, called “L’Oasi del Pescatore”, it’s amazing, you can eat what the owner fishes every day with a glass of cold white wine, dipped into Nature. It’s a muddy blues lake place.
Venice is a city like no other. Timeless, decadent and beautiful with a terrible mass tourism. This the reason that you find bad eating and being soaked. It’s necessary to lose one’s way to find the best part of the city. Next time, you’ll call me up and I try to find a good pizza for you, is it ok?

[laughs] Sure thing, Mick, I’ll do that.

Thanks so much for the chat. We wish you the best of luck. Any last thoughts?

Mick:

Thanks a lot to IDIOTEQ.com for the interview.
Take care, listen to good music and If you are suffering from some addictions, do go on bandcamp and download our EP!