Sottomissione Zero started around 1999 in Morbegno, a small Alpine town in Italy’s Valtellina, where a high school full of kids in bands and a shared rehearsal room gave a group of friends somewhere to start playing hardcore. Their newly released six-song EP “Burn In Flames” was recorded in May 2003, when that first period of the band was already nearing its end. More than two decades later, the friends are playing together again and have six new hardcore songs in progress.
Alessio Gusmeroli, who joined on guitar around 2001, calls Morbegno a lovely place to live and a sleepy one, surrounded by mountains with few alternative spaces.
Sick of It All and Snapcase were among the bands that pulled Sottomissione Zero towards hardcore, but they did not have to look as far as New York for their first real example. Unabomber were two years older, came from the same town and played fast hardcore shaped by Negazione, Raw Power and NYHC.
Unabomber used to open shows with Sick of It All’s “Good Looking Out”. One line stuck with Alessio immediately: “True Friends Will Always Be There.”
“For us, that very song became the definition of hardcore music. Fast, energetic and full of positivity.”
Unabomber’s self-titled 1999 cassette became a major record for the younger band. The connection is still there now. One of Sottomissione Zero’s new songs borrows a line from Unabomber’s “Sistema Ingiusto”.
Morbegno already had its own punk and hardcore history before either band appeared. Alessio traces the early 1990s back to two main sources: “Nessuno Schema”, a fanzine led by C8, drummer of Gradinata Nord and several other bands, and metallic hardcore band Carrions NN. Alienazioni Unite, Unabomber, Gradinata Nord, Redblood Hands, Gotcha and Obbrobrio followed through the same small local world.
One of the drawings connected to “Nessuno Schema“, made by Franco Tivano, depicts Cech Demon, a mythical figure associated with the northern, sun-facing side of Valtellina.
By the time Sottomissione Zero were playing shows, some of the earlier people had already moved on. Their closest bond was with melodic hardcore band Polarbears. Members crossed between the two bands and Alessio played in both.
“I tend to consider the Sottomissione Zero – Polarbears crew of those years as one thing: a collective of friends who made music, organized gigs and had fun together.”
A lot of that happened at Lokalino. The room had a mixer, drums and equipment bands could borrow, and the high-school crowd went there constantly. Some rehearsed. Others watched rehearsals or sat on the couches and listened. Metalheads and grunge kids used the same place as the punk and hardcore crowd, along with friends who did not play anything at all.
“You were never alone those days; you could always find some friends there,” Alessio said. “Lokalino was our home. We were so lucky to have such a free space.”
People from that late 1990s and early 2000s Lokalino crowd later helped create Morborock, the annual city rock festival held in May.
La Cantina in nearby Talamona was the other regular base. The Sottomissione Zero and Polarbears crowd organised gigs there themselves. Younger bands including Wasting Time, 112 Abarth and Mastika Plastika played, and they also got Milan bands such as Mach 5, PhP and Sledge HC to come up to the valley. A Mach 5 and PhP split survives from that wider circle.
The mountains made the distances feel bigger than they look on a map. Milan is around 90 minutes away from Valtellina. For teenagers without much money or a car, it could still be difficult to reach. They went down for gigs when they could, sometimes slept at friends’ places, and later drove once someone had a licence.
Milan also gave them BIPS Studio. Lorenzo Monti was another kid from the valley who ended up working there, and in May 2003 he recorded and mixed “Burn In Flames“. He is working with Sottomissione Zero again now on their next record, “D’Improvviso”.
Those six songs came after roughly four years of figuring things out in public. Bassist Rinaldo remembers the first version of the band as a group of friends who mostly wanted to have fun and make noise. They were also trying to separate themselves from the techno, house and electronic-hardcore crowd around them, whose style and subculture felt completely different.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
The early record pile was broad. The Offspring’s “Smash” and Rancid’s “…And Out Come the Wolves” sat alongside Sepultura’s “Roots” and Ratos de Porão’s “Brasil”. Their first drummer loved NOFX, and Rinaldo thinks that helped make speed a habit from the beginning.
“We weren’t very technical, but we cut our teeth by playing live as much as possible.”
There were enough shows around Morbegno at the time to let them do that regularly. Alessio joining around 2001 changed the guitar side of the band. They wanted to play with more precision, the guitar became more prominent, the songs picked up a stronger metal influence and they started writing lyrics in English.
“Burn In Flames” came out of that version of Sottomissione Zero. The songs stay fast, with more weight on the guitar than the band’s earliest punk-led stuff.
“Trying To Be Good” came from the positive mental attitude and self-development Alessio connected with in hardcore, especially through bands such as Bane, Have Heart and Shutdown. “Burn In Flames” and “Inside Hate” came from anger towards authority and his sense that the system around him was failing.
“It wasn’t working in 2003 and it is still not working now. I can only speak from my own personal angle, but I think that my guitar-playing was fueled on one side by sheer disgust towards any kind of authority and on the other side by the desire to lead a healthy, positive life. It is energy, rage + positive mental attitude. It is hardcore.”
Life outside the band was changing quickly too. Some members started university, others went into work. Alessio was getting deeper into alpinism and ski-mountaineering, two things that are still a big part of his life.
“I still find the ultimate freedom in the mountains, surrounded by snowy peaks, completely away from society. I think spending a lot of time in the mountains is one of the punkest things one can do these days.”
For Rinaldo, the 2003 recording closed the first stretch of the band. They had started as teenagers in 1999, played as often as possible and reached a version of the sound they had been trying to find.
“Listening to them again today, they represent that exact moment for me: the culmination of our musical growth, but at the same time also the end of an era. New lives and new experiences were beginning, and what we might call the ‘early years’ of Sottomissione Zero were already becoming part of the past.”
“That is the snapshot I carry with me of who we were in 2003.”
One song from those sessions came from a far harder part of that period. “In Memory Of” was written after a car accident on a rainy night killed Ibou and Bozza, two friends from the local scene who were regulars at the gigs in Talamona. Alessio had grown up next to Ibou and played football with him as a kid.
“Ibou was a legend.”
Both deaths hit the local community hard. Alessio was around twenty and remembers responding with anger.
“I took it as an injustice. How could the universe (or god or whatever) be so unfair and take two young kids like that?”
Sottomissione Zero have brought “In Memory Of” back into their current set. When they play it now, they still remember Ibou and Bozza.
The band itself went through long quiet periods. The friendships stayed in place even when the music did not. Alessio lived in Alaska for a while, Jacopo went to Australia, and everybody followed different parts of adult life.
Between 2019 and 2022 they tried writing in a punkier direction. Alessio is very plain about how that went.
“That did not go super well. It simply did not flow and we never got anywhere with that.”
They were back in the rehearsal room, though, and in 2025 they decided to write hardcore again. Six new songs came from that decision.
“We are a hardcore band, and we are proud to be such thing. We found our flow again.”
The friendship goes even further back than Sottomissione Zero. They have known one another since elementary school. Music gave them something to keep doing together even when there were years with very little band activity.
“Is it the music that kept our friendship alive or it is our friendship that keeps our music still alive and relevant? Sometimes I ask myself this question and to be honest I cannot really find an answer. I can for sure say that the music has made our friendship incredibly special.”
They are all in their forties now and still send each other new music, rehearse and get excited about new songs. Alessio borrows a line from Negazione’s “Brucia di Vita” when he talks about it: “We are still alive and burning with life.”
Valtellina itself has changed around them. Alessio sees the current punk and hardcore scene as much smaller than it was when Sottomissione Zero started. He remembers a time when metal, hardcore and even more extreme styles such as black metal all had local people playing them. He finds it much harder now for aggressive bands to get shows in the valley and thinks much of the local audience has moved towards mellower music.
“But we like it raw, we like it aggressive, and so we keep trying. Attitude for me has always come before the music.”
There are still people doing it. Scalpo play direct street punk and, in Alessio’s view, have built a real place for themselves in the Italian scene. Coxtola work around emotional punk and screamo. Potere Negativo are also from the region, while Milan band Gezora have ties back to Valtellina.
Sottomissione Zero have “D’Improvviso” ahead of them, Lorenzo Monti working with them again and six new songs taking shape more than two decades after the sessions that produced “Burn In Flames”. Alessio has another idea sitting around too.
“Sometimes I dream of a Valtellina Hardcore Festival, perhaps if we find some other wacko dreamers like me, we can make that happen in the future.”
Photo and archive credits: Sottomissione Zero. FANZINE files copyright “Nessuno Schema”. Cech Demon drawing by Franco Tivano.
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
