It’s my pleasure to introduce you another cool melodic hardcore band from Italy. Milan’s THE SEEKER have released an EP called “An Open Letter” and are working on their debut album, to be released on vinyl later this year. Read up the interview below, you’ll take a lot more from it.
It’s so good to have an opportunity to present another hardcore band from Italy. How are you guys? How did you find me? :)
Thank you, Well, we saw your work with the band aperture, and they’re our frineds here in italy and we always play alongside them, it happens that our 7 song ep came up, so we thought it’ll be cool to write IDIOTEQ up :)
Milan represent, huh? What’s hot in the city in terms of underground scene?
Well Milan is a pretty mixed up scene, there are kids that are more into the commercial side of hardcore and there are also some kids that prefer the old school way, but we Always said to ourselves that each side has it’s good side.. so we take cues from them. The scene in Milan is good, but sometimes hypocrisy is still evident.
Where would you place yourself in it? Do you have strong anchors in it? Have you been active musically before starting this band?
Yeah we’re all musically active from different bands before.. I think we breathe it, we are living it, we can talk for 2 hours on other things, but if we talk about the music and the music scene that we belong it will probably take us eternity haha =)
Tell me more about those bands.
They’re all cool bands, except for those some who has a rockstar attitudes (which is i think it’s not good for a hardcore band), but as we said, there’s still some bands here that can be considered as ”living the hardcore ways”, and it’s good to know that for most of the bands that we knew are vegan and straight-edge, and they often participate in animal rights and some other environmental projects.
Gimme some names, for Christ’s sake! :D
Some of the bands that we like listening to are Milan based bands namely.. A FADED GLORY, LIGHT UP, TO THE EMBERS, HOLY, SET ME FREE, THE MIRACLES, bands that we also love outside Milan are GOLD KIDS, BLAME IT TO THE OCEAN, CURSE THIS OCEAN.
And what about the bands you’ve played in? :)
We played with bands such as CVLT OF GRACE, APERTURE, WASTED STRUGGLE, HANNYA, UPWARD, FALL OF A RISING SUN, LA CREPA, D-SWOON.
It was a pleasure playing with these bands, specially the show we did at SGA (spazio giovanille autogestito) with CULT OF GRACE and WASTED STRUGGLE. Though few people came, it was a blast it’s one of out favorite show up to date ’cause we all had fun and we’re pretty much wasted as hell haha. :)
DUDE! The bands you have played IN, not WITH! Come on! ;)
Our bassist Michael played in a band called JOHN MORRIS EXPERIMENT, a post-hardcore band, then Mike played in FEARS OF MADELEINE. Stefano our drummer still plays with his metalcore band the BEAUTY THE HORROR.. They’re recording some stuff right now.
:) Thanks!
Have you been involved in writing a zine, shoting pics at shows, booking gigs, or running a label?
Ahhmm yeah our drummer Stefano always help booking shows, but non of us has an experience writing zines unfortunately, but we’re also thinking about it, maybe in the future we will have our own record label, but we’re still far from it..
Ok, so what local fellow-bands are you tight with?
We only did a couple of shows this year and we got really friends with UPWARD a Milan based youth crew band.
Why aren’t you a straight edge band? ;)
Ahmm we’re not a straight edge band, but we don’t have anything against straight edge kids.. Ae respect them for what they believe and it’s good that the hardcore scene is very open about different subcultures, mike our guitarist was once straight edge for some time, but now he dri ks and smoke alot hahaha.
Ok, so you’re a modern hardcore band, right? Let’s talk labels, shall we? ;)
What are some of the differences between a modern (melodic?) hardcore band and a regular hardcore punk act? :)
Yep we’re a little bit modern in sound production, but we prefer to call our band plainly ”hardcore”, ’cause people now a days is so quick to associate you with whatever musical genre for easy consumption., and about the record label, we’re still unsign, we’re hoping that this year will be great for us, and to finally find a suitable label for us =)
Do you have some friends within the real Italian tough guys hardcore structures? ;)
We know some guys from other region of Italy.. but we’re not closely associated with them and we can’t name names hahaha. and that is a very Dangerous thing to do (joke!).
Oh, yeah. The “m” word ;) Yeah, but seriously, is the mafia still powerful in Italy?
I think it’s everywhere, but the mafia in Italy is concentrated in the southern part of Italy, people here are not afraid of the mafia anymore, contrary to papular belief. Just awhile ago Giulio Andreotti a known mafia collaborator died.
Ok, so let’s go back to THE SEEKER’s heritage, shall we? Your new record is out! Please give us some thoughts on your newest work.
Mike:
About the record, it is called “An Open Letter” at firts we want to call it an open letter to the masses, but then again we said, fuck it! An open letter would be cool! Haha. This is something that we wanted to do since the very beginning, to speak our mind politically and let our inner demons die, the record is all about being politically concious, but we manage to squeez in a little bit of our personal experiences in the lyrics to make it more real and not just write lyrics out of imagination, we always make it sure that the lyrics has a personal impact in our lives.
Music-wise, we take cues from our favorite bands like KILLING THE DREAM, RUINER, THE CARRIER, TOUCHE AMORE, LIFE LONG TRAGEDY, DEAD SWANS.. We don’t do a standard songs, we write songs depending on what we feel, sometimes it’s so heavy and sometimes it’s melodic, we don’t have a preconcieved ideas. We just jam it and et voila! :)
:) Can you tell me a bit about the process of writing the record? Was it hard to put together these tunes? How do you cooperate with each other during the process?
That’s a good question, we jam at mikes house and write simple riffs, then we go to the practice space to try it, so it’s kinna like thimas edison thing, trial and error, then webster our singer instantly put words on it and afterwards we review the whole thing, of course we used our cellphones to record it :)))
“An Open Letter”. Who do you write for? And hat does this letter mean?
Michael D:
We wrote this e.p for every single person who is cynical about themselves, we wrote it for the politicians that instead of helping the country they govern, they steal from it and use the money to feed their own obsession of power, we believe that hardcore-punk is more than music, it is our driving force to scream out loud that there’s no room for hypocrisy, no room for greed, there’s a lot of things that we’re angry about, but we’re angry in a positive way, off course we also did some songs pertaining hypocrisy and false friends that will stabb your back the minute you turn your back so on and so forth.
You mention a vinyl format for later this year. Who will be putting it out?
Web:
Yeah we will put it on vinyl this on 12″ format, but we still don’t know about the label, maybe we will released it on our own DIY style, but if we’re lucky enough to be noticed by a label then why not released it with a decent label? :)
Alright, let’s discuss touring. I saw the teaser for Youth Memories Fest. How was it?
Stefano:
Yeah we played that fest awhile ago and it’s a blast. And about touring, we are planning to go on European toyr this coming August 15 to 28, some dates are already booked, a but lot of them are still TBA.
Oh yeah, we’ll get to that ;) Now tell me, what other shows have you played recently?
Marco:
We played with CVLT OF GRACE and WASTED STRUGGLE at SGA club. We haven’t played that much since we also have work, but this year is going to be different. We will have much fun as posible playing anywhere everywhere.
Do you enjoy playing shows near your hometown? Is there a difference in the crowd there, a lot of people showing up to support you?
Mike P:
Yeah i think playing our hometown is the principal thing, in order to have that much support from other cities you have to establish fan base in your own town. Yeah people show up, but not that much, but we’re happy that they dig our music :)
Ok, so what shows are you planning this year?
Mchael D:
As for now we’re preparing for our european summer tour, we recently joined a contest which is hosted by wet fest in Italy, it’s a voting competition, the bands that will have more votes at the end of may will open for EVERGREEN TERRACE and MORE THAN LIFE, check the link on our facebook page and vote us haha.
Any chance to see you somewhere outside Italy?
We’re still working on it, we’ve been contacting bookers all around Europe and it’s not that easy as it seems…
Why? :)
Michael D:
’cause we don’t have a booking agency or stuff, we do it DIY most part of our existence as a band. and some promoters will say to you that this particular event is confirmed but at the end it’s never really booked, and most of the time they’ll tell you that it’s canceled.. So booking it diy styyle is pretty hard.. But we like how we do it on our own, an we thank our friends abroad who helps us when it comes to band matters :)
Ok, guys. Let’s sum it up in a few words. What’s next for yourself in the coming months as well as the band?
Web:
Right now we’re writing our first full lenght album, we’re trying different method in writing it so i think it could be a great record, trying new stuff is not bew to us :)
Thanks so much for your time. Are there any final words you want to pass onto readers?
We used music as our scape, we want to scape and just drive away, play every city, go back home and leave again.. We will scream out our hearts until we run out of breath! Thanks to idioteq for taking the time to interview us, it’s a pleasure! – The seeker
P.S.: We used music as an scape, we want to scape and just drive away, play every city, go back home and leave again.. it’s our scape.
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