NIGHTMARE TOYS

Thursday, August 16, 2018

CODENAME DELIRIOUS INTERIEW





We're Codename: Delirious and we are a five-member unit from Milan, Italy. Our lineup is composed of Omar, singer, Marco, bassist and backing vocalist, Dario, guitarist, Chris, drummer and Luca, dj.

2. Who does the majority of the writing? Is it a group thing or does someone handle the writing duties?
The bulk of the writing process goes through our bassist, Marco, who takes care of the instrumentals and the electro backtrack, and our singer Omar, who handles the melody writing duties and writes the lyrics. Once the basic structure of the song is written at home by Marco and worked on in the rehearsing process, every member of the band generally shapes his own part until everybody is happy with the song as a whole.

3. Where is the band based out of ? Where did you want to the band to end up? What was the dream city to have as your home base once you got out of your scene?
We're from a small town just to the north of Milan, Italy. Being close to a city where pretty much every european tour of every metal band will at some point play a gig has been huge for our musical upbringing, but our dreams are of course bigger than that. We'd say that every big city would be a fantastic experience for us: London, New York, Tokyo, Berlin, you name it. Our singer loves the U.S., that'd surely be a peak experience for him to yell “what's up, any american city ever?” from a stage, haha! But as a whole we think every part of the world has something to offer, and it'd be a blast to be really anywhere saying “we're here to play our music, what are you here for?”. Milan is already pretty big, though, so we can't say we've been out of luck coming from here.

4. What is your genre? What bands do you use to explain  to people what you sound like?
That's a good question. Our bassist Marco just had to argue with some guy on the Internet stating that there's no such thing as ”dubmetal”, that the genre is called “metalstep”. To be honest, dubmetal is just a fun label we came up with, something that sounds interesting to talk about; we feel like our music actually spaces out pretty well in terms of electronic influences: we have definitely a thing for the heavier tones of dubstep and brostep (people like Excision, Nero, Knife Party, prime Porter Robinson, etc.) and 4 out of 5 members played together in a rather short-lived post-hardcore group called Set Sail To Arcadia, so the core-ish influences are obviously there. But we try to keep an open mind and will probably try anything once, and we've experimented with rap, trap, hardcore (as in the electro genre), even latin vibes in our first album. We can't wait to show you guys what we're capable of, in that sense!



5. Can we buy anything from you Cd's shirts etc and where can we buy them?
We're planning on having an online store in the near future, and our first album is coming out this fall under Agoge Records!

6. Do you have studio time lined up anything new coming soon?
We're actually ahead of schedule in that sense: our CD has been fully recorded and produced by Matt Johnson, former guitarist for The Autumn Offering and producer for bands that we love. The name that stands out is of course Exotype, and one of our singles features their singer Steven McCorry. It's been a blast working with the people we've been around and it was such a shame Exotype had to split up, but of course it always is when a band breaks up.

7. Have you ever been on tour? If so where and with who?
Actually no, and this is kind of interesting. We have shared the stage with a number of bands we idolized (The Algorithm, Hacktivist, It Lies Within, Dayseeker, Helia, Exilia among others) and we didn't even have to move out of our hometown to do it! We'd love to go on tour ASAP, and we're working in that direction. Our album coming out will decide our fate, we guess!

8. What is your favorite band? Who are the bands who influenced you?
Haha, there's a lot of names we could and probably should make. Our biggest influence in terms of where we wanted to go with this whole endeavor was probably guys like Linkin Park and Trivium. For most of us Ascendancy was a huge album, and so of course was Hybrid Theory (we also collaborated with a huge Chester honoring event in the past 12 months and plan to do so in the near future). Right now we try to absorb as many influences as we can, really: an open attitude towards all music is a healthy thing to have, something that we feel a lot of metalheads might have struggled with in the past (we know we did). 

9. Do you have a website? And do I have to verify that I am 18 to enter it? 
We don't, as of now social media are challening enough to master, haha. We have a Facebook page that is where most info about us will be posted with a good frequency and some songs on Youtube. Instagram is where we may post more personal stuff, where you actually get to see what we're working on before anyone else does. You always find us at Codename: Delirious (or codenamedelirious for insta), won't be too hard to connect with us!

10. What about your music do you want people to remember? What is the quality you want to hit people when they hit play?
Well, that's a tough ask, haha! Music is at its core an unspoken art, and even when lyrics are there they're never really meant to be descriptive in the way, for example, a book is. We certainly want people to experience a certain set of feelings depending on what we do at a given moment (getting hyped and wild during drops and breakdowns, slowing down when the rhythm comes to a halt, etc.) and we surely feel comfortable playing with strong, well-defined patterns that will make you bang your head, but at the heart of a song there's a certain way we feel when writing stuff that owes to our individual experiences, and those vary for the listener. We want them to feel something, that's for sure. Any song that just goes by, leaving nothing in its wake, is a failure for every musician. But we'd love for every fan to attach to our music whatever they feel like, there's no right and wrong when it comes to emotions.


11. Name a person who is integral to your band that nobody knows about , what person drives your band like they are part of the band? Who is the extra member ?

To be honest we don't really have an extra member. We have fans, friends and family and they're all very supportive which we're so grateful for, but none of them acts as a sixth member. We might add that it's probably a great sign, that nobody tries to make decisions for us or move the needle one way or the other. We have great people around us that let us be us (first among others the always reliable Gianmarco, Agoge Records' owner), and that's beautiful.

12. Tell nerds like me about your live rig and equipment.
Sorry, we're letting you down on this but we're not nerdy about equipment (actually our drummer is, he's definitely in the minority but we'll write down his whole beloved gear just to make him happy), haha! Our DJ works with a Mac and a Traktor console for live performances, our guitarist Dario has recently bought a Line 6 Helix LT pedalboard and an Ibanez SA Series and bassist/backing vocalist Marco has upgraded to a Fender Precision Bass and rocks a Little Mark III by Mark Bass, but that's about as far as we stretch, haha! We got kind of a punk attitude, as long as everything sounds good we're ready to go.
Drummer gear: Drum: Pearl Acrylic 4 pcs 22-10-12-16; Snare: Ludwig Supralite 14x4 steel; Cymbals: Turkish, Meinl; Double Pedal: Tama.

13.What is your musical guilty pleasure that you are ashamed of?
We got plenty: High School Musical soundtracks, Justin Bieber, Lene Marlin, some reggaeton, everything trap and hip hop. Italian stuff, too, there's plenty of shitty Italian music that we go crazy for. We are shameless, haha. It's cool tho, we'll listen to everything once.

14.If you could custom build a band who would be the members?
We'd love to see a dubmetal supergroup doing what we love to do much better than us haha. Drums-wise it's gotta be Portnoy, he's the gold standard in metal drumming for us. Such a powerhouse. Bass guitar is a tricky one, but we're going with Justin Chancellor from Tool, a personal favorite of our bassist. Guitar is another tough choice where we might go for the surprise pick: Brad Delson from Linkin Park. Efficiency over solos, all day everyday. Let's pick two voices: a singer and a rapper. Howard Jones (former Killswitch Engage) and Tech N9ne. Two strong presences on a big record, let's make that happen!
Oh, and the DJ, of course: Excision, top pick. No question. 

15.Message to the fans? What is it?
That it's never too late to change. To pick another career, to improve your attitude, to develop better habits. To be happy, at the end of the day. God knows how many times we felt like it was too late to follow certain dreams and aspirations, both individually and as a band. We realized it almost never was.








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