Italian hardcore veterans TO KILL recently released their comeback EP on Epidemic Records and they are finally about to hit the stage again! Their reunion show will take place at Venezia Hardcore Fest this weekend and we have once again caught up to give you some more details and insights on their new era. Read the full interview below!
The new limited edition 7” is dubbed “Unbowed” and features 2 new songs, 2 unreleased (1 re-recording and 1 cover)! Order via Epidemic Records! Use code VEHC2019 to cancel shipping costs and pick up your order at Venezia Hardcore Fest!
What prompted you to get back on track and continue this amazing project? Did other reunions or the revival of 90s and engaged, straight Edge hardcore affect you at all regarding the reunion?
This reunion was kind of unplanned actually. We always loved to play together and always missed it. Life got in the way, but To Kill is a pillar of who we are. We played our last shows 5 years ago, and they were the most amazing shows ever!
Then after last year’s edition of the Venezia Hardcore Fest, as Samall, one of the organizers, put up a post on Facebook asking people who they wanted to see at the following edition, some people said To Kill and we kinda just told ourselves “this looks like straight up our alley and fun, why not” and here we are, a week from the show, i’m sitting just before departing for Rome to do our final practice.
What did you miss the most about TO KILL?
Probably just about everything. To Kill really was a tight family, and experiencing what we did, together, was just the best. From the crazy situations in which we found ourselves in sometimes, to the fun we had on tour, to the awesome bands we played with and the people we met… everything meant the world to us, and still does. But probably the best thing of all, is that feeling that you can hardly find anywhere is the shows. To share such a powerful experience with different people every time is priceless. That feeling of belonging, of sharing such a potent experience together. it is something that is really hard to find in life, and i hope everyone gets to feel that way at least once in their lifetime.
Was it an easy decision for everyone? Tell us about the chemistry in TO KILL 2019.
If one would stand behind of those one way mirrors from an interrogation room, witnessing the process that brought us back together for this show, would not believe how easy of a process it was. It was literally one person asking “should we” and everyone else answering yes without even thinking about it too much. it just felt the right moment and the right event.
The same goes for the chemistry. Yes many years have gone by, but emotionally was like if we never stopped, and we hope the 2 new songs are the proof of that. The truth is that we were friends before To Kill and stayed friends after. So the question everyone had to ask themselves was: do i want to do something that is going to be amazing with some of my best friends? who would say no to that?
How does it feel for you to return to those older songs and the very ethics that got you together that are now entrenched in a totally different time of your life and the world around you? How does your message fit the current socio and political landscape?
Well, some of the lyrics still reflect a part of our lives which might be in the past, but of which we are not ashamed. Even if some of those ethics evolved differently for the 5 of us. You could almost compare this to when someone asks you if you will regret your tattoos when you are old.
But also, some of those lyrics are still pertinent. The socio political situation has quite worsen from when we were playing, so if anything, we’ll sing some of those lyrics in a way that is angrier than ever. Our country has politically moved to the right even further, the planet is dying at an even faster rate than it was predicted when we were playing, injustices are still happening anywhere. Plenty of reason to be angry about.
What do you expect from the upcoming reunion show at Venezia Hardcore Fest?
We have no expectations: we play because we love to play together and we want to have fun with our friends one more time. But we do have hopes. The hope that people will still be willing to scream with us, get sweaty with us, stage dive with us. The hope that enough people remembers and understand how much all this always meant to us, that even if the time passes, this is who we are. That the Venezia Hardcore Fest will be for us a reason to be angry together, have fun together and feel together with anyone that would like to.
Ok, so let’s touch base on your new music. What were your inspirations behind these new tracks?
We just released a new 7” called Unbowed, which contains 2 new songs, an old song re recorded and a cover song from this old Roman Hardcore Band called Growing Concern. The inspiration behind the new songs was absolutely To Kill. The songs came out quite spontaneously, we were not looking to impress and we didn’t have a special plan. We just thought we wanted to play this show and then Jai had some ideas. From there, without much trouble, 2 new songs just came out pretty naturally. But we only decided to record them, because they sounded like To Kill, and we loved them both so much that decided to play them both live, because they came out like 2 To Kill songs from over a decade ago.
Then we wanted to record the song Fall Down, from the Roman band Growing Concern, in memory of their drummer Gianni, who recently passed. If you play Hard Core and you are from Rome, this band is like one of the bricks that sustain the whole structure of our Hard Core scene.
So what’s next? Will there be more shows? A full length? Any final info you would like to share?
We genuinely did all this very spontaneously. It all blossomed from someone saying they wanted to see us live and we thought “why not?”. But we only thought about this show. There has not been any talk about anything else. Everyone is very busy, Camilla Jai and Ugo have jobs that keeps them super busy, Fausto has a daughter now and lives in Milan and i live in the alps, so we most definitely can’t commit to become a band again. We broke up because we couldn’t keep up with both the pace of the band and where our lives were going, and if anything our lives got even busier. But we love To Kill with all our hearts, we love the history behind it and we love each other. We truly can’t wait to play the Venezia Hardcore Fest.
