In our new inreview with yet another noteworthy Italian hardcore act, we survey some of the activities of Trieste’s counterculture and the story of young hardcore punk band IBREATHEYOUDIE, who shared their reflections on DIY, their local music scene, and more. BreatheYouDie’s emotions are palpable and literally every single track makes it an earnestly passionate release. Play it, read our interview below and stay tuned for more music from IBREATHEYOUDIE soon!
Hey guys! Welcome to IDIOTEQ. How are you? How’s Trieste? Please drop a couple of lines about the band and the area you’re hailing from.
Hello! First of all, thank you so much for calling us here!
Usually when you talk about a “scene”, you refer to a particular music genre and style. In our case, surely we’re talking about hardcore scene. Well, Trieste is a small town in north-east Italy and there are not many bands playing hc. But we can say that we have a very good “musical scene”, made by bands belonging to different genres with a very good, supportive attitude. The majority of us are very good friends, and so there is not that kind of childish competition that very often can be found between musicians. When you play here you can be sure that you find these persons in front of the stage slam-dancing helping and supporting you. We are very happy that some of these friends are finding their way in the world, bringing Trieste music around. Just to give you a couple of examples, we have GRIME (they play sludge metal and they made many tour covering Europe), TYTUS (classic metal/nwobhm style that recently released they fist lp on Sliptrick records) and of course our hardcore brothers of L’ORDEGNO, that have just released a very good punk hardcore album. These are just a couple of names to give you an example of the bands variety in town.
The community motor of this entire scene is surely the Tetris Association, a place and a fantastic group of persons that are fighting for ten years to promote good live underground music, both local and international. The last night for example, we had Sadistic Instinct from U.s.a. and Dehuman from Belgium. Many musicians are involved in Tetris organization and everybody there puts big effort, professionality and tons of passion, in a very friendly way. When you play in Tetris, you really feel supported: a good working d.i.y. idea, outside and against every commercial logic.
Moving to Gorizia, a town 30 minutes by car from Trieste, you can find the people of “Gorizia Hardcore Crew”, which organized many good concerts during the last year. This summer they were able to organize a hardcore fest in the main square of the town with skate ramps…. it was very weird and funny to play hardcore open air while old people, ladies and children with ice-creams were watching you from safe distance, probably thinking “who are these tattooed people screaming like crazy and making loud noise?”.
Haha, sure! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you initially got into independent and punk music?
Well, during our adolescence, we were all skaters and frequenters of social spaces, and these facts helped us to get in touch with underground culture and music. Some of us started listening punk classic to evolve into a more violent and fast hardcore, others made their music path starting with metal and then getting in touch with the hardcore world. One thing we can say, we all love the 90’s and early 2000’s hardcore bands and we have a very strong influence from that period. This is, more or less, the story of all of us, the way we found a connection with hardcore. Of course, in different periods, since our ages goes from 40 to 28.
About us: the band formed in February 2015 and since then we are trying to produce the best shit we can! A funny thing is that we are all colleagues, working for a not for profit association that helps and protects the refugees in town. Our ethical and political approach in life is very close and we are proud to scream we are antifascists and antiracists.
Talking about music, with IBREATHEYOUDIE we want to play an honest hardcore, trying not to fall in the already existing sub-categories of the genre. We did not want to play “old school hc”, “new school hc” or other, we didn’t want schemes. Of course in our EP you can hear a lot of influences from other bands –but we hope we mixed these influences in a good expressive way, without caring if we are or we are not in this or in that box.
While our singer Fabrizio is at his first experience with a band, the others have already played in several other bands, like TEARS|BEFORE, DREGS HC, THIS MEMORY OF YOU and EXIT FAILURE. As you probably noticed, none of these bands never arrived on MTV, ahahah! Joking, of course!
Alright, so back to IBREATHEYOUDIE, can you explain a bit more on the band’s name?
Sure, it is a very basic concept. “iBreathe”, means that I breathe because I am alive and I am really alive because I fight, I want to experience things, live a life with a meaning as an individual, having critical conscience and open eyes, avoiding conformism, trying to change things, struggling, putting energy and soul into things, feeling deep emotions.
These things make a person alive, if you do not feel those things, you must be empty…
Lyrics-wise, how do you embody this concept? What are some of other themes that inspire you to write for this band? What affects upon your writing?
Well, the lyrics express emotions that life brings us, some make us feel alive others make us feel empty. For example, “Sickness” talks about the bad sensation that stays inside of you, like a sickness, every time that relationship ends, nevertheless the pain, you have to keep going and continue living the everyday life. The songs are about being positive in the midst of so much shit around us, are about being creative, free and respectful in a society that pushes you to be more conformed and competing against each other.
You played your debut show in early 2016. How was it?
Yes, we played our debut show one year ago, on the 19th of January 2016, with other two bands. The show took place in Trieste at Tetris where everybody in the public were friends, so the concert turned out to be a very nice party, it was great!
Recently we had our cd release party there and once again, it was very cool.
Is playing shows your favorite part of the band process? How does it relate to other parts of this game, including generating ideas, producing work or sharing your personal thoughts with the world?
Surely, playing live is the part we prefer most. Hardcore is a very “physical” genre and the communicative energy you can put out on stage is unique for reaching people with your message. When we are on stage, we try to give our best, public can be made of 100 or 1, does not matter. It is when you play live that you really get in contact with people, you get some kind of intimacy and connection. When you play hardcore you don’t play for the people, you play with the people, and I think we’re lucky to have this chance. Travelling around, meeting new people, making new friends, sharing our music, are beautiful things.
Creating songs is surely the biggest and most difficult part of the job, and, for this reason, we meet twice a week in “buso”, our music room, trying to advance and arrange riffs. From our perspective, Monday and Tuesday are our favorite days in the week!
If you could have any band from the history of all hardcore-related bands art sharing stage with IBREATHEYOUDIE, who would you choose?
Well, the list would be too long! Since we have a very different taste in bands, we would never agree to find a band in common, but we will try telling you the first six ones that jump in our minds: NEUROSIS, BOTCH, MINOR THREAT, UNBROKEN, INTEGRITY, RISE AND FALL.
How important have these various outside inspirations been to you as an influence and what, specifically, do you think they have allowed you?
We think that when you listen to many different bands and music for years and years – not only a very specific kind – and you play an instrument, all the music you’ve loved melts together in a creative inspiration that goes beyond a close, narrow specific kind of music full of rules. All good important songs in your life are like seeds that can grow together one day. This allows you to be free from schemes, using all these different influences in something sincere and honest. Not necessary incredibly original (that’s very difficult and we don’t pretend we’re the ones!) but for sure this naturally avoids the risk of copying some band in particular.
When we started this band, the only thing we knew was that we wanted to play hardcore. We never asked ourselves which kind of hardcore we want to play. We already had some reviews of our EP and it was funny that every time we were compared to different bands – sometimes very different one from another. We think that this is something very good!
So what are your hopes for future steps for the band?
Right now, we are composing new songs that we really hope to record and put in a split with some good band soon. However, our biggest focus now is to play live the more we can. As we’ve already told you we really love to travel around, feel the energy at live gigs and especially meet new people. This spring and summer we hope to be around a lot! We are waiting for some dates confirmations, let’s see what happens.
Great, be sure to let me know!
All right, so finally, are there certain artists discovered in 2016 you were particularly excited about?
Yes, of course! There are a lot of news and some good album came out the last year, like “Audio Noir” of BOSSK, “La Capitale del Male” of an Italian hc noise band called HATE&MERDA, “Hypercaffium Spazzinate” of DESCENDENTS, “Stage four” from TOUCHE AMORÈ, “Discontent” form SPIRITS, “Rheia” from OATHBREAKER.
We discovered a very nice oi band in BULL BRIGADE from Torino, the Uk straight edge hc band XREPENTANCEX and SENTENCE from Zagrab. We also want to highlight and congratulate many Italian underground bands that are emerging and really pushing their stuff around, like DISCOMFORT, HOBOS, SLANDER, ATTEMPTS and CAVERNICULAR, well done!
Ok, so let’s switch to books. What do you read to reenergize and distance yourself from the world around? What particular works would you recommend to our readers?
Well this seems a little bit obvious but right now in this period, it would be impossible non-to appreciate the classic distopyal books and operas. Without even trying to mention the 1984 Orwell’s masterpiece, we cannot stay indifference to other classical books as Fahrenheit 451, The penulitime Truth, a Scanner Darckly by P. H Dick or all the Aldous Huxley opera, Just to easily talk about the classics -there’s so much in these books, no need to be too complicated.
Alright, so thanks so much for taking some time with us. Feel free to add your final thoughts and take care! Good luck for the rest of the year!
Thanks sooo much to you for sharing your interest in us. Hope to meet you soon in person at some cool live gig!
Take care and spread hardcore always. Hugs from Trieste!
