Morena Rozzi – Macbeth (ENG)

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Interview by Miriam C.

Transcript by Ary R

For read the Italian version click HERE.

After seven long year of silence, the Italian act Macbeth comes back into the music scene and the band is proud of introducing the brand new album, “Neo Gothic Propaganda”, precisely this month. Seven years in which the band has to face some negative factor but also a few positive ones, as the lead female singer Morena Rozzi described us in this short but quite important interview, permitted for Femme Metal Webzine only on the occasion of the forthcoming release.
 
Macbeth comes back 7 years later with a brand new album called “Neo-Gothic Propaganda”. First of all, why did it take so much time to release a new record after the release of the previous ones called “Superangelic Hate Bringers” and “Neo-Gothic Propaganda”? What was the main obstacle that ‘stopped’ the band activity?

Yes, sure. You were right, seven years have been passed. There were a few obstacles, we have been forced to take this long break due to a shoulder issue that Max had to face and this was a very important thing and so we had to cancel a tour in China and some other few show in the Eastern Europe and in between this long break, I’d like to put something that is really personal to me: Fabrizio (the drummer of the band) and I got married and our daughter was born lately. Her name is Alice (she laughs) and now she’s 13 months old, so in part we had to stop due to a decision I made… yeah, I mean: we wanted to get more time due to this because to me it was really, really important. We have never thought of splitting up or to call it quits, we have never thought anything like that, no! Absolutely not! So the main reason about this long break was due mainly to Max and right after to the birth of Alice, my daughter.

Would you like to tell us something more about the writing process and how this new brand album was developed?

Like the previous records, this album came up in a very natural way, a very spontaneous one. We often hang out together also outside the music and working range, so we often meet each other, we talk, when we are in the rehearsal room we improvise, there’s something who dares to create a guitar riff, we’re influenced by the concerts and show we attend, we’re influenced by the new artists and rising bands we listen to and then we confront ourselves with each other. It’s a continuous brainstorming we have, so this latest record, “Neo Gothic Propaganda” has come to life thanks to this working and research symbiosis we’ve done, we have never stopped, that’s all! On an artistic level, we’ve never stopped and we worked on this album which is a comeback to our roots but we’ve included a few new hints. That’s it! And we can recall the album title as well, because we wanted to connect the beginning with the end of this record.

I’m going to quote what the press release says: “The new sound combines a wide range of influences and is heavier, dynamic and more melodic”. In particular, what are the main differences that you can notice between “Superangelic Hate Bringers” and “Neo-Gothic Propaganda”?

Yeah, well, the lyrics are more melodic indeed, for what it concerns the vocal shares, the vocal parts I can say that there’s more melody, we paid more attention in not leaving so many music spaces, so we tried to make both the music and the vocals as a sort of “continuum”, so there’s still the feature of leaving some space to the guitar riffs and to the solos of course, but the record is more based on a sort of chemistry. We worked really hard on this point, on this aspect, in which as I said the music and the vocal shares are a continuation. I hope of having been able to explain it in a proper way, so this is what has made this album as it is, as some artist would say I consider this record as the more mature record we’ve ever done, so I hope that it will open us a new path to a new music genre, unfortunately there’s nothing so much new around, because there’s nothing new to invent nowadays, but this is a record that has “forced” us, that has pushed us to develop even more, over and over again, since it has to be a continuous development. We shouldn’t listen to the same music genre, we have to listen to something fresh, something new and particular…

Lately, I’ve read about your recent problems (or better polemic) with the Italian superintendence for the Landscape and protection of the Arts ’cause your first cover draft – who included a photo of the San Galgano abbey – was censored. Let me say above all that this it’s a quite unsavoury situation. For our worldwide readers, would you like to be so kind to tell us in details what did it happen? In addition, why did you in a first moment choose that particular abbey?

Well, the abbey was really striking and it symbolized what we wanted to represent with the brand new image so for what it concerned the pictures, the location we’ve chosen for both the videoclip and the photoshoot the abbey of San Galgano was the best option. The problem was that a lot of people… well, we are at the mercy of ignorance nowadays, so I don’t really know why the landmarks and the cultural assets combined the neo gothic and a gothic metal band to something weird, I don’t know what they were going to expect from us… That’s all! We don’t deal with merciless topics, so the fact is that a lot of people often tend to mislead themselves because of an image, without getting informed by what a product is, what there’s behind the image of an artist, so this was the main reason, these people have matched the cover artwork with a “weird” music genre, like the metal is. (She laughs). This is so ignorant and sad, in my opinion! No one asked about explanations about it, they only based their suppositions to this music genre and this is so sad. We didn’t ask anything and we went beyond! It’s really lousy, so we had to stop ourselves for quite some months and we moved forward. We have given the idea of creating this brand new cover album with this snake and this blue rose that – we repeat it often – is a very important matter for us all, it’s a very important topic for us, for our work, for our artworks, it’s the yin and yang, so it represents the dualism that characterize us in our lyrics, in our image, in our style, in everything… So we decided to take these elements and to create this cover artwork basing ourselves on a very important factor, or rather the important value for our band… and so we made the decision of taking a rose and a snake, which could recall the cover of our very first album.

I’ve also discovered that you have filmed a videoclip for “Scent of Winter”. When will this videoclip be published and also what can you share about its behind the scenes?

Uhm, revealing in advance… (she laughs)… I could say something, but I can’t really say so much: the launch of the videoclip will happen on February 28th at the Rock N Roll pub in Milan (Italy) and for this occasion, we’ll perform four unplugged songs for those people that will come to see us playing there and we will introduce the videoclip we made. It’s a very, very particular video we have shot with Mirko Andreis, a director from Turin (Italy), we already had the chance to work really well together with him also for the shooting of “Without You” , the song was taken from our album called “Superangelic Hate Bringers”. It’s a very suggestive videoclip, I can tell you that it will be in black and white, there’s a story behind it, the main characters of this story will be both the music and the story that it’s told in this video. This is what I can seriously say, unfortunately I can’t say too much… also because the video is not out yet

You were telling me that you’ll play in Milan on Feb 28th. I assume you will introduce a few brand new songs for the Italian audience… 

Yes, exactly! Yeah, yeah! We’ll introduce something taken from this brand new record, absolutely!

Macbeth‘s debut album was released in 1998 with “Romantic Tragedy’s Crescendo” and although you entered the band only in 2000, two years later, and you debuted in the second album “Vanitas” (released in 2001), a lot of time has been passed.. what can you recall of those days and what is actually changed, for you as a person and for the band itself in these years?

I remind that period as a period of reference point and discovery, if I have to talk about the debut/beginning for me and the passion the guys have instilled me has been the one that brought Macbeth in becoming a very important matter to me and to us. I’ve grown together with the guys, we’ve grown together and we turned what Macbeth was in 1998 into what the band actually is. I remind the debut as a period of growth, a period of time of open-mindedness and harmony and working together and since 2000 to nowadays I think that nothing has really changed. I really consider myself as a part of the band and even if a lot of years have been passed I feel more open-minded, I feel more open to propose new things, to create something new… Everytime we have the rehearsals, we start with this kind of brainstorming, this is what it really happens and we have grown. We have created our own way that we still conduct and still have conducted in these 14 years. Compared to the beginning, I have to say that 14 years is a quite long time, I also fell in love in these years with the founding member and we have started a “new project” together besides Macbeth, or rather creating a family.

The last Macbeth gig has been played in 2009, do you have any tour planned at the moment?

Yeah. We are already booking a few dates, but they are all abroad at the moment. We have no Italian date now, we know that the label is currently contacting some festival for July and August, but I can’t tell you more…

Well, Morena we’re at the end. Would you like to greet your fans and our readers in your final words?

First of all, I’d like to thank all those people that have always supported us, that still support us, that are in the mood for listening to this new record, that they feel like listening to it, that they feel like following us, keeping themselves updated on our website (www.macbeth.it) or contacting us on our Facebook page and then, I would like to take the opportunity to remind everyone to come and see us on February 28th at Rock N Roll pub in Milan and I would like to invite you as well…

 

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