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!