MALLEUS hail from Italy and represent a modern wave of metalcore, highly influenced by nu-metal sounds… Oh my God, I’ve just said the “n” word! Aaaaaaaaaa! Yup, NU METAL, girls and boys! A blasphemy, right? ;)
Naaah.. open your heads and check out my recent interview with these honest, passionate guys from Grosseto. We discussed their new album “One Of Us”, new controversial video for their song “Clown”, their local music scene and several different things about the band itself.
Hey! What’s up, guys? How are you? All good? [smiles]
Hey there! All goes well in Italy!! We’re in a period of great news!! Hope all goes well on your side!
Sure thing, bro. Thanks! So, you’ve recently released the official video for your song “Clown”. It’s bloody brutal! What’s the message behind this picture? What about the „passion, friendship, humility and respect are fundament elements within its band and the message they want to promote” statement? [smiles]
Yes indeed, our video tends to be rather violent (if not gruesome) but it isn’t placed there without a reason:
The video (and the song) talks about how fake people can be, creating a sort of “mask” just to show themselves different towards other individuals. In this case however you never know who you’re up against.
Take the clown for example: a figure that pretends to be happy, funny while in reality he could be quite the opposite (in our song we make multiple references to Gacy, a famous serial killer).
Throughout our entire experience respect and friendship were never absent. We were lucky in finding individuals who helped us to become what we are now. And this cd is dedicated to them, people who became “one of us”.
How did you come up with the idea for the video? Who directed it? Where did you shoot it?
The idea came out when trying to think of something “shocking”, in order to send a kind of “in your face” message. That’s also ‘cos we were fed up of the usual videos available right now, so our videos was kind of a dare…
I’m sure some liked the idea and others didn’t but hey… it’s the rule of the game when creating something unusual… Using masks was entirely my idea (MarioSoS, guitarist): I wanted to give each clown its own personality through unique masks and costumes (and the Payday videogames sure helped me out a lot).
The great outcome of our videos is mainly thanks to Armando Marchetti (from Jackolantern Independent) who built the story, creating those disturbing details à la “Clockwork Orange”.
The video was shot in our town, and we also set up our studio/garage as a sort of super concert, calling all of our friends that wanted to help us and have fun.
Scenes regarding the story were instead shot at the videomaker’s hometown.
I also wanted to thank Ico and Filippo Puccetti for helping Jackolantern Production in releasing this video!
What about the whole record? Where would you locate the album’s strengths? How are you feelings about “One Of Us” at the moment?
We focused our work by creating a mixture between SLIPKNOT, EMMURE and THE ACACIA STRAIN in order to create an aggressive and “angry” sound.
We’re lucky to have been working with guys like: Andrea Alunno Minciotti and his DKR RECORDING STUDIO for recording and editing SIGNAL AUDIO (Canada) for mixing Joey Sturgis (EMMURE, MISS MAY I, ASKING ALEXANDRIA etc.) for his great help, we’re absolutely honored of his presence/help.
Daniele Nelli (TASTERS) who gave that extra “touch” in all of our tracks.
All this mix created “One of us”, a non-canon innovative album where we focused in creating a blast, thus sending a direct and less cryptic message (without getting ourselves drowned by a thousand guitars and different melodies altogether).
How did you tap these guys for this job?
We had a lot of luck!
Internet proved to be fundamental; together with a friend of mine we started looking through different forums and websites in order to find info and people willing to give us a hand.
Regarding Sturgis we had a brief exchange on messagges and mail and… voila’! We specifically choose him because he had the right mind to square the circle, especially for our music genre…
With Daniele things were smoother and easier; since we knew he was up for these kind of jobs (and also being the leader of Tasters, an important Toscan band).
Surely this was right choice, considering his expertise!
Back to the SLIPKNOT sound you mentioned, how do you feel about being tagged as “nu metal”? Mixing this style with metalcore equals death in some countries [laughs]. I’m joking, but you know, “nu metal” is not “true” and stands at variance with “core” sounds, don’t you think?
We MALLEUS come from a generation where “nu metal” had its glory days, as such we still cherish it
(considering it to be our first step into the musical world).
I’m perfectly aware of the fact that “nu” and “core” tend to be concepts far away from each other, but
we can say that to music in general, right? I hear and watch talented groups that, unfortunately, have all one thing in common . they all sound alike! Innovation is just not a thing these days….
When, during the late 90′, numetal groups started to emerge, many metal fans started making war cries against it. When someone creates something that goes beyond the standards, it’s highly probable that someone’s going to complain about it…
Regarding “One of us”, the “nu” component enabled us to implement personality and character in our tracks, thus avoiding to deliver something substantially “empty”/ Influences from the old SLIPKNOT (and I underline, the OLD SPLIKNOT) led us to a sound that we can truly define as ours: that sense of malady, dirt, non-defined sounds, confusion… those are elements that you can rarely find in this year’s productions/creations.
Same thing goes for the video, we dared! only time will tell if we did right or not….
How did you evolve since the BLOODY RABBITS era?
MALLEUS is formed in 2006, with a different band formation than today.
We used to play metal, but with a modern sound (DEVILDRIVER, STRAPPING YOUNG LAD).
Since the beginning we had supporters and fans who helped us developing our project till this day; After our first demo we started to evolve and change (same goes for our line-up) but our passion always stayed the same.
Our style developed and evolved thanks to the musical influences of each member of the band.
Unfortunately we live in a narrow-minded town, there’s a lack of exchange of ideas, co-op with other groups, live events etc. It’s the kind of town where only the strongest rule and have bragging rights other others, and it sucks! We were forced to do things on our own most of the time (even if some helped along the way) and “grow up alone”.
Are you trying to somehow change that?
We’re doing something but people here, quite stupidly, are unable to surpass certain “legal” problems…
There’s not much to say… just cross our fingers and hope to get lucky!
The music scene here is almost dead , we’re doing whatever it takes to revive it and regroup everyone under one flag.
But very often contrasting ideas and rivalries impedes us in doing so.
We’ll just have to play our part and have some hope for our town…
Ok, guys.. are you already thinking about your next step, another record?
Our next step is to advert our album as much as possible; songs and videos will be released while we work on merchandising and creating new tour dates.
Meanwhile we will create more and try to improve our genre.
Sure, it’s early to return to the recording studios but our mind is set to reach such objective; we still want to make new songs but firstly we need to get our album known everywhere!
What about live shows? Any plans for that?
We had several personal and work-related problems lately, that brought us to a temporary halt but we’re planning on making new gigs.
We’ll ad our album all over Italy and organize ourselves for a tour all over the country. We hope for some positive responses!
Alright, fellows. I hope you’ll overcome your problems very soon and hit the road. Remember, there’s nothing like live gigs to promote you better!
Would you like to discuss anything else with me, boys?
We’re happy of our work and results.
Sure, we made mistakes but we managed to learn from them.We want to thank everyone who believed in us, who follow us still today, friends, family and all the bandswe met.
We wouldn’t be here without all of you!
And special thanks goes also to you guys from IDIOTEQ.COM for this interview and to let everyone know what we think and how we work.
Follow us on FB (www.facebook.com/malleusfb) to keep yourself in touch with the latest Malleus news,gigs, videos etc.
I hope you appreciate our latest work “One of Us”!
Thank you and take care!
Thanks so much for your time and honesty. All the best, guys!
