INTERVIEW: The Foreshadowing

First of all, thanks to accept the inter­view request. I knew you guys in my tra­vel to Italy, the guy from Milan’s CD Store was lis­te­ning you and well, nothing has been said, you’re great. Unfor­tu­na­tely I couldn’t buy the CD, because they are lis­te­ning from the youtube.

Fran­cesco Sosto: Thanks a lot man, it’s a honour.

Ground­Cast: To the start, tell us about the band, how everything began? Tell about the name, why “The Foreshadowing”?

Fran­cesco: Regar­ding the name, in the begin­ning we had cho­sen “Escha­ton” as band monic­ker, but this name was adop­ted by lots of some black metal based bands, so, since we wan­ted a name used as lit­tle as pos­si­ble, we adop­ted “The Foresha­dowing” as our final choice. Our image and music was based on apo­calyspe and, for this rea­son it was neces­sary to find a name which was close to this main idea. The Foresha­dowing is offi­ci­ally active from the period 2005/2006. Foun­der and cre­a­tor of the band is Ales­san­dro Pace (gui­tar), who deci­ded to engage me on key­bo­ards and  Andrea Chi­o­detti (gui­tar). In fact the band was for­med long before, by the end of 1999 we had the oppor­tu­nity of meet us together, trying and arrange the mate­rial we got at our dis­po­sal, but the pro­cess came to a stop for two basic rea­sons: we could not find peo­ple inte­res­ted in Gothic Doom sound and in the meanwhile Ales­san­dro was enga­ged by Klimt 1918, so we deci­ded to sus­pend all. Only towards the end of 2005, after each one of us acqui­red their expe­ri­ence with major bands of the so-called “Roman scene”, we gathe­red again to try again. The same three of us have wor­ked on song­wri­ting and arran­ge­ment of our debut album “Days of Nothing”, and soon after we were fol­lowed res­pec­ti­vely by Jonah Padella (drums) and Marco Bene­vento (vocals).We also asked for help to our fri­end Davide Pesola for bass recor­ding. With the same lineup we recor­ded “Oio­nos”, our second album, and, before the Sum­mer Bre­eze Fes­ti­val in 2010 we enga­ged, after a long and dif­fi­cult selec­tion, Fran­cesco Giu­li­a­nelli on bass. All the rest is his­tory you alre­ady know.

Ground­Cast: And about the band’s influences?

Fran­cesco: We star­ted our car­rier on the wake of the bri­tish gothic-doom metal, but then in the long run we drew our influ­en­ces to other bands which are not purely metal-based, or even not metal at all, so I would quote Shape of Des­pair, Neu­ro­sis, Dead Can Dance, Phi­lip Glass, the Swans, Angelo Bada­la­menti, Cel­tic Frost, Pink Floyd and many more.

Ground­Cast: How the music flows to you? Tell a lit­tle bit about the com­po­si­tion and cre­a­tive process.

Fran­cesco: There are plenty of solu­tion when it comes to make a song: it basi­cally starts from a piece of music that might be a riff or a piano theme, and then we got two ways to cho­ose: either by making some demos at home, or by deve­lo­ping the same theme in our rehe­ar­sal room with the full set band, or both ones, which is the best solu­tion and the one we’ve cho­sen for the song­wri­ting of this third album.

Ground­Cast: Recen­tly I inter­vi­ewed Cada­ve­ria, and she said that the Italy Metal Scene is so hard to sur­vive. How do you manage this?

Fran­cesco: It’s hard to sur­vive because there are many fac­tors to be con­si­de­red. First of all, we’re going through a worldwide cri­sis that invest all fields in terms of com­mer­cial, music in the first place, so peo­ple don’t buy records, don’t go often to con­certs and by con­se­quence, many clubs have been clo­sed in Italy. More­o­ver, those few clubs who are still open show their lack of sup­port to out­co­ming ita­lian bands, pro­ba­bly because of their xenophi­lia mania. If you also add there’s not a mass sup­port cul­ture for under­ground music in Italy, you can explain why lots of ita­lian metal scene are ine­xo­ra­bly disappeared.

Ground­Cast: Italy is a great coun­try with great bands, I can spend the entire day tal­king about bands from there, Storm­lord, Cada­ve­ria, Elven­king, Rhap­sody of Fire are some exam­ples, every band with your per­so­nal style, that makes the sound uni­que. What do you think that make “The Foresha­dowing” unique?

Fran­cesco: Maybe a cer­tain way of struc­tu­ring our songs, which is very pop-like , at some extent.

Ground­Cast: We have the inter­net era, with peo­ple down­lo­a­ding songs every day, every time, what makes pos­si­ble to the world knows some new bands. Do you think that it helps the musi­cian or not, it’s a big problem?

Fran­cesco: On one hand it might be very help­ful and use­ful, at least in terms of adver­ti­se­ment. Nowa­days, even Major labels want the bands to build their Face­book or Twit­ter page and let down­load some sam­ples of a brand new album. On the other hand it’s unde­ni­a­ble it’s been a great damage for the music busi­ness, I mean, I unders­tand that CD pri­ces are often expen­sive, at least in Italy, but if you have to cho­ose between spen­ding 5 dol­lars for an ori­gi­nal high qua­lity cd and go to a shop and buy it, and down­load the same album at 192kb staying com­for­ta­bly at home, most of the peo­ple would cer­tainly cho­ose the second option. The trou­ble is, that, by doing this, it’s not the label to be the cho­sen vic­tims, but the out­co­ming bands like us, I think many peo­ple still think you give a mor­tal stroke to the Labels. It’s not so true in fact. The mor­tal stroke is basi­cally given to the bands like ours.

Ground­Cast: Recen­tly you rele­a­sed “Second World”, what chan­ged from the “old” to the “new”, “The Foreshadowing”?

Fran­cesco: It has chan­ged a lot once again, and we like to make it clear, because our work has been hard, and we didn’t stop to the first solu­tion. It’s been a work of musi­cal rese­arch, that’s why we’ve cho­sen to insert some new solu­ti­ons in “Second World”, like for exam­ple, acous­tic parts, the use of a “real” Gre­go­rian Cho­rus and more impro­vi­sa­tion on the struc­ture of many songs, which is remar­ka­ble in “Colo­nies” and “Reve­rie is a Tyrant”, for exam­ple. And I would like to remark as well the inser­ting of more power­ful and doom rif­fing throughout the album, we alre­ady said in other inter­vi­ews we con­si­ders this album the most metal one than ever, but not only metal.

Ground­Cast: How is the accep­tance of fans and media? The new CD ope­ned the band’s horizon?

Fran­cesco: There had been a great res­ponse by fans and media, like it hap­pe­ned after the rele­ase of our pre­vi­ous two albums, that’s great for us, because we have demons­tra­ted this way that we’re not a band who rele­a­sed by chance two pretty good album. Now let’s hope to find something in the hori­zon, at the moment we’ve been con­cen­tra­ting our ener­gies on loo­king for a tour to pro­mote “Second World”, even if it’s very very dif­fi­cult to find some room on the stage nowa­days. It doesn’t depend only on us, but we’ll try to do our best to make happy those fans who would like to see us coming on the stage.

Ground­Cast: Exist some con­cept behind the songs from “Second World”?

Fran­cesco: The con­cept of a “Second World” is inten­ded to be as a sort of revo­lu­tion. But when we talk about revo­lu­tion it doesn’t mean that we must go to the squa­res, des­troy everything and trig­ger a fight against the govern­ment. Our revo­lu­tion must be star­ting from the inside, it must be a spi­ri­tual revo­lu­tion. We just need our life to be puri­fi­ca­ted from what the man cre­a­ted so far : a mecha­ni­sed and de-humanized soci­ety, made up of indus­try, highways, skys­cra­pers, junk food, railways, traf­fic and so on. We got to take our time again and search for a new world, because another world is always pos­si­ble, but a change of men­ta­lity is requested.

Ground­Cast: “Oio­nos” is a great CD, what do you think that is bet­ter in “Second World” and what do you think that can be bet­ter to a next rele­ase (a band with the great qua­lity that you have need be in cons­tant evolution)?

Fran­cesco: I think what’s bet­ter in this album is that it’s simi­lar to Oio­nos, but it’s also simi­lar to Days of Nothing. So it’s like a mix­ture of our first two album, that’s it. I don’t know if it’s our best album, but this is the only rea­son why I con­si­der it a step forward, that’s for sure.

Ground­Cast: That’s it guys, thanks for your time. Now, the space is yours to say what you want to the Groundcast’s readers.

Fran­cesco: Hails meta­lhe­ads of Bra­zil! We hope coming soon to our coun­try to per­form in front of you and tell you dark and melan­cho­lic stories!