Who is answering the questions?
Hi everyone, I’m Michael Crimson, lead singer and rhythm guitar player from Rising Dark
Can you tell us about the formation of Rising Dark?
Rising Dark came together in the most natural way a band can. Me and Balzael started playing together when we were 14 years old. Other friends of us joined, some of them left and here we are today more than 10 years later still playing together what we like!
How did you get to the band name Rising Dark, and what does it mean to you?
I don’t quite remember how the name came out, and it sure wasn’t thought too much. Looking at it now it’s got a strong connection with our song’s themes (I’ll talk about them later in the interview) so it’s perfect.
To an unfamiliar reader, how would you describe your sound?
Our sound is a kind of metal heavily thrash-influenced. You can find lots of classic metal structures in our songs, and some snippets are inspired to death metal. It’s kind of a melting pot that has the right amount of old school and some modern influences.
What bands have influenced you over the years, and why?
Personally speaking, I’m into classic bands like Judas Priest, Slayer, Motorhead, Metallica and so on. Everybody in the band listens to different things, from prog metal to gothic metal to hard rock so we’re not fossilized on a single genre. We can’t tell that some bands have inspired us because we play and compose without looking too much outside of our band, but definetly a lot bands like the one mentioned before inspired us with their careers.
How did you get to the album title ‘A World In Ruin’, and what does it mean to you?
“A World In Ruin” is a snapshot of where our planet is going forward to. Some things have already happened, some things are going to, some others hopefully will never happen.
Can you elaborate on some of the other main themes and influences that run throughout ‘A World In Ruin’?
Lyrics on this album describe some of the problems that afflict, afflicted or perhaps will afflict our world: things such as mafia, war, criminality and so on. We also take ispiration from Lovecraft’s books or videogames.
What can you tell us about the recording process for ‘A World In Ruin’?
The album was recorded at FEAR Studio in Alfonsine (RA), here in Italy. It’s a well known studio in the Italian metal scene. We usually enter the studio with all the tracks finished and go straight to our goal. We made some choices for this album that are not so common, for example we decided to have an simple and direct production with not so many elaborations on it in order to give our fans an authentic product more similar to a live a show.
What song means the most to you from ‘A World In Ruin’ at the moment, and why?
It has to be “Teotihuacan”. Lyrically, it talks about human sacrifice among the Aztecs. More than the lyrics, I appreciate it for the music, which is simple, with no riff overloading and a damn catchy refrain. Our fans loved it when they heard it live for the first time and it stood out from the rest!
What songs are you really enjoying playing live from ‘A World In Ruin’ at the moment, and why?
“Teotihuacan” again. Because we have a little scene we perform live in which I drink blood from a chalice. Oh and because our fans go wild and sing along. “Military Operation Slaughter” is another song which drives the crowd crazy. See, I never cared about showing off how many notes I can play per second or some other shit. I’m an entertainer, I love to see people go wild and have fun.
What was the hardest part about putting ‘A World In Ruin’ together for you guys, and why?
It has to be to overview all the songs with the perspective of a fan, and not that of a musician. Cut off superfluous parts, scrap entire songs if necessary. It’s an important part of making an album in my opinion, one that with our first release “Apocalyptic”, wasn’t taken too much seriously, perhaps for our very young age and scarce experience at the time.
How did the artwork for ‘A World In Ruin’ come together, and what does it mean to you?
The artwork was realized by Simone Anomalia Furia. He did an amazing job turning Balzael’s ideas for the artwork into reality. The guy on the cover is an Italian Pro Wrestler called LEON, he’s a friend of mine and a fellow wrestler cuz I am one too. We wanted to interpretate personally the concepts of our songs so we decided to transform ourself into many different characters.
Touring wise, can you give us a couple of personal highlights from your time on the road?
For a musical point of view we shared the stage with many great artists : Grim Reaper, The Quireboys, Kee Marcello and others. Off stage we love to joke around, Stanley disappears, we invent stories including horny groupies searching for him when he’s away and he always falls for that. Dan puts mayonnaise on pizza. Balzael go around naked and stuff like that, we are still rockers so good manners are usually forgotten ahah.
How would you say the sound of Rising Dark has grown/progressed over the years?
I’d say the sound is the same, but packed in a different way. We always played what we liked and we still like playing metal! Years have passed and we collected experience so we try to not replicated errors we have done in the past, for example we used to write tracks that were very very long (7 minutes for example) because we were so excited and blinded by our music, now we try to pack our tracks in a more mature way.
What sets you apart from any other band out there right now?
Perhaps is the fan-driven attitude we have. Many bands seem to write songs for themselves (or for other musicians). Some of them are so complicated that they hardly leave a sign on people’s memory. My objective is to write that song, that riff, that refrain, which strikes hard and before you realize it, you’re singing along.
What else can we expect to see from Rising Dark in 2016?
Lots of live concerts over Europe, so stay T U N E D! Thank you guys, see you under the stage!
https://www.facebook.com/Rising-Dark-169181442638
https://www.reverbnation.com/risingdark
https://whitetowerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-world-in-ruin
