Few questions – interview with death metal band from Italy

Few questions – interview with death metal band from Italy - HELSLAVE.

answer guitarist Jari

Ave, can you introduce your band to our readers? – When was it founded and what style of music do you play , etc.?

Ave, we are Helslave from Rome, Italy and we play death metal since 2009.

I would define our style like a mixture of the Stockholm death and Gothenburg melodeath sounds, with some slight black metal contaminations here and there. Following an ep and a full lenght, we just released a new ep entitled „Divination“, out via Black Market Metal label.

Where and under what conditions were you recording the new album? Who was in charge of sound, production and mastering?

The recordings took place in Rome, at Stefano Morabito's 16th Cellar Studio, with whom we have already worked back in 2013 for our first ep. Besides being a friend and a great producer, he is also a great connoisseur of the genre we play, it's always very stimulating to work with him.

For the mixing and mastering process we sent everything to Sverker Widgren's Wing Studios in Stockholm, we love his works, especially with Demonical. For this release we were looking for a 100% swedish death metal sound and both did a fantastic job to achieve it, we are really satisfied with the result!

How many copies were released and which medium was used for this new edition (CD, digital, vinyl, cassette)?

Divination has been released both in digital e Cd format...666 copies to be precise!

Who is the author of the lyrics and how were they created and about what do the lyrics deal with?

The themes of the lyrics refer to the world of the necromancy and divinations, as the title suggests. The inspiration came from the ancient oracles of death, like the greek Nekromanteion, places where people tried to estabilish contacts with the world of the dead through rituals and sacrificies . We wrote the lyrics in collaboration with our new singer Diego, trying to evoke that imaginary at the best.

Who created the logo of the band, and who took care of the graphics and the website? What about you and social networks? Do you consider these things important?

The logo has been realized by Patrik from Chainsaw Design, already guitarist of swedish death metal band Gravebomb. We manage our social pages by ourselves, with the help of our manager Tito. We can't really define ourselves a „social“ band, however nowdays social networks (as the other channels like youtube,bandcamp) are indispensable to promote the music and give the fans all the news about releases, live gigs etc. and receive their feedback as well.

Which label did you choose for releasing your album and why this label? Are you satisfied by how your label represents you and takés care about you?

We sent the ep around, and the feedbacks have been very positive, but it was a little hard to find a good proposal for the release. We simply chose the label that proposed us the best offer and met our needs, which happened to be Black Market Metal label, we are very satisfied with them.

Which bands do you idolise and where do you get your inspiration?

Each one of us has his own musical background and favourite bands, but I can say that we are all fans of death and melodeath swedish scene, we listen to a lot of 90's bands, from the mainstream to the more underground ones. That's where the main inspiration for our music comes from, we always wanted to play this genre.

Did you send your record to some Labels - which are the labels? How was the response?

See answer above

How many gigs have you played? Which type of gigs do you prefer, whether it's (clubs or festivals) and which of your performances would you consider as the best?

I couldn’t remember the exact number, but it has surely been more than fifty gigs, we played a lot in the roman underground scene in the early days. Then, step by step, we managed to bring our music also outside the borders of the country.

Personally I like both club and festival gigs, each one have his pros. The best live was at Metaldays '14 in Slovenia, we shared the stage with a lot of great bands of which we are fan, and even though nobody knew us, the response of the audience has been great, really good times!

What about your plans for the future? What do you want to achieve with the band?

Our plan in the near future is to play as much as possbile to promote Divination. Besides ETEF we already have some festival booked in Italy and Netherlands, with great bands such as Grave and Master. Meanwhile we are writing our second full lenght that will probably be ready during 2018, we want to share our music and passion with more and more metalheads from all over the world.