DARK RHAPSODY

The Italian 6-piece progressive-metal band Raintime almost seemed to come out of nowhere, arriving on the scene fully formed – and remarkably mature. Their debut album – Tales from Sadness (2005) – dropped jaws and raised eyebrows everywhere. Their 2007 follow-up release (Flies & Lies) was no less aggressive or highly regarded. I spoke with lead singer and vocalist Claudio Coassin earlier this year.

CC: Hello?

BM: Is this Claudio?

CC: Yes, is this Bill?

BM: Yes, Bill Murphy.

CC: What’s up?

BM: How are you?

CC: Oh, doing fine. Fine, fine. You?

BM: Doing well. I’m sorry I’m about 5 minutes late; I was having some dialing problems.

CC: Oh, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, really.

BM: Good. Well, you’re doing well today. What’s the weather like there in Italy?

CC: Well, it’s kind of cloudy. It always rain here.

BM: Does it really?

CC: But that’s the reason of our name, you know?

BM: [laughs] I was going to ask you that.

CC: [laughs]

BM: Raintime.

CC: Raintime, yeah. It always rain in the northeast here. And we’re just under the mountains, so we got a lot of rain during the year, you know.

BM: Really? Ok.

CC: And what about there? Where are you calling from?

BM: I’m calling from Michigan in the States.

CC: Oh, ok, ok, ok.

BM: So it’s only about 30 degrees here, which is about, I guess, zero Centigrade.

CC: Oh, uh huh.

BM: It’s still pretty chilly around here. What’s the temperature there?

CC: I think it’s 15 degrees.

BM: Oh, ok.

CC: Nothing more.

BM: Well, that’s not too bad. I’d trade that for what we have. [laughs]

CC: [laughs]

BM: Well, it’s great to talk to you, it really is. I appreciate your time today.

CC: [laughs] Thank you.

BM: Let me ask you a little bit about Tales from Sadness, and then we’ll talk a little bit about Flies & Lies.

CC: Ok.

BM: Tales from Sadness, unbelievable. What an exceptional album for a debut. It’s like you guys came out of nowhere and just blew everybody away.

CC: You think so?

BM: I think so. A lot of reviewers think so, too. They’re all looking at it like, “Holy cow, where did you guys come from?”

CC: [laughs]

BM: [laughs] It’s great.

CC: Yep, it has not been so lucky, this album. As you know, the label failed, so we had no luck with that album. [laughs] But ok, we hope in some re-release, you know.

BM: Yeah, I was going to ask you, now that you’re getting more popularity around the world, will you re-release your first album on a different label?

CC: You know, we hope so. We were never talk about that, but I think they’re going to in a future plan, you know.

BM: Well, that’s good. Let’s see, a lot of reviews—how do you describe your music? A lot of the websites that do reviews of your first album say it’s like combining heavy metal and melodic death.

CC: Yeah.

BM: Or extreme power metal, or death and black.

CC: Yeah.

BM: How do you yourself describe your sound?

CC: We don’t. We really don’t know how to describe it. It’s kind of a mixture, you know, between classical heavy metal and melodic death metal, Swedish death metal, just like In Flames or Children of Bodom, and stuff like that. But I think we can’t have a sure definition of our title. We really don’t know what we are playing. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

CC: But the combination I think is pretty good.

BM: Oh yeah, definitely.

CC: Yeah, it’s a mixture, death metal mix heavy metal, classical heavy metal. So we listen to Iron Maiden and Helloween and stuff like that, so it’s kind of combination. Nothing else. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Well, you know, I really love track eight especially, “Daily Execution/Paradox Defeat.” That’s amazing.

CC: Glad that you like it.

BM: Really uplifting.

CC: Yeah, it’s, I think it’s the song that represent, I think the whole style of Raintime, because we got every kind of style on that song. And every song is, I don’t know the meaning in English, but yeah, it’s kind of representative of the album, you know.

BM: It’s, my favorite part is like four minutes in when it really kicks in, and it’s like really uplifting. Almost slightly reminiscent of Celtic music, actually. It’s just really driving and fun.

CC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

BM: Do you guys like playing that one live?

CC: Yeah, yeah. It’s pretty cool. In that part, with an epic, an epic part of the song, and it’s really fun to play on stage, ‘cause every guitarist is involved, even the bass player, just go in front of the people and starting to dance and something like this, you know. And it’s really funny.

BM: Yeah, I can imagine. Do you have plans to play that when you do ProgPower?

CC: Oh, we don’t know, but maybe. Maybe that should be the song that will be at the end of the show.

BM: Oh wow. Yeah, I can see that.

CC: I think with a great choir at the end, so I think it will, we will play that at the end of the show. Maybe. I don’t know, I don’t know yet.

BM: [laughs] How ‘bout you? Do you have a favorite track off Tales from Sadness?

CC: From Tales? I think my favorite one is “Moot Lie,” the first one.

BM: Oh, ok.

CC: It was the most aggressive of the CD and the most powerful, I think. And everybody jump. At every concert we make, everybody jump at the beginning of that.

BM: Oh yeah.

CC: So it’s got an up tempo, I don’t know what else to explain.

BM: Oh yeah.

CC: But yeah, it’s fun to play on stage.

BM: You added a keyboard player to the band after you recorded Tales from Sadness.

CC: Yeah.

BM: That means you’re playing the keyboard and singing on every track on this album, right?

CC: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

BM: Wow.

CC: Yeah, even on past shows, before we added Andrea Corona on the keyboard player, I used to play keyboards and sings on the same time. But it was really hard, ‘cause you lose your breathing.

BM: Yeah.

CC: And I concentrated on playing the piano and singing in the same time. So we must have a keyboard player here. So that’s why, we did that.

BM: Did you find it difficult to kind of step out from behind the keyboard and take center stage, or was that easy for you?

CC: No. I think it has been a natural thing.

BM: Oh, ok.

CC: Yeah.

BM: How ‘bout letting go of the keyboard work? I mean, watching somebody else play all your keyboard parts. Was that hard at all?

CC: Oh no, no. It’s my friend, so why? [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Yeah. It’s not like you’re going to tell him, “No, jerk, you’re not playing it right.”

CC: [laughs] No.

BM: No, that’s cool. What is it—when you think of recording Tales from Sadness, what comes to mind? What is your, the most standout memory in your mind when you think about the process of recording that album?

CC: Ok, it was a really hard decision, because you know, we didn’t have money, and we decided to do this step. And what I remembered is that we just called the producer, and we thought, “Yeah, we can do an album.” Ok, we made a lot of sacrifice, and that is the thing that remind me. It was really hard, really hard to collect all the money to go there and say, “Ok, let’s try it. Why not?” And then we went to the studio, and after that we sign the CDs to a lot of labels. We had some positive feedbacks, and we got Arise Records and Intromental Management. So it was the first step, yeah.

BM: When you say it was a lot of sacrifice to raise the money.

CC: Yeah, yeah.

BM: What, were you, did you have to like take out loans, did you sell stuff you had? What do you mean by sacrifice? How does that–?

CC: Sacrifice, ‘cause I study at the University.

BM: Oh, I see.

CC: So I have no money. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Yeah.

CC: Just ask money to my parents.

BM: [laughs]

CC: And uh, [laughs] yes, three guys aren’t working, so they had to give me a lot of sacrifice, you know, take a car after that and concentrating on taking the money for that. So that was really hard, you know, we’re young, and so it’s difficult for a young person to get money.

BM: Do you still study at University? Are you still–?

CC: Yeah, yeah, I’m still study. I’m a little bit late. [laughs]

BM: Oh really? What is your major? What are you studying to be?

CC: Economics.

BM: You’re going to get a degree in Economics?

CC: Yeah.

BM: Oh really?

CC: Yeah, I have five exams to take.

BM: What do you—let’s say you don’t make it huge in Raintime, what do you intend to do with your degree in Economics?

CC: I think working in music anyway.

BM: Oh, I see. Yeah.

CC: You know, become a manager, band manager, working with producers, stuff like that.

BM: Oh yeah.

CC: It’s my—I can’t imagine a life without music, you know? So I try to use this degree for that.

BM: That’s a great idea. How old are you, Claudio?

CC: I’m 25.

BM: Twenty five. So you’re, yeah, you’re pretty young for being so successful with music already. That’s great.

CC: [laughs]

BM: Tell me—

CC: Let’s hope that. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Let’s hope it continues.

CC: Yeah.

BM: The cover art for Tales from Sadness was Mattias Noren. How did you hook up with him? He’s really good.

CC: Yeah, yeah. It’s through Intromental Management.

BM: I see.

CC: They say, “We had a link with him, all many bands of ours have been in contact with Mattias Noren, it’s quite cheap.” So we decided to work with him. And the cover were, it was already done, and so we didn’t have ideas, we just discovered that in a hidden part of the website and, “Ok, that’s perfect.”

BM: [laughs] Really? Tell me about the cover. Tell me about the content of Tales from Sadness. If there’s a theme to this album, it seems to be kind of a depressing one. [laughs]

CC: Yeah.

BM: Where did this album come from?

CC: It’s, it’s kind of depressive, but there’s you know, a light, a light. And you can see the light in a song that’s In the Light Forever. So all the things are not gothic, but mystic, but also not blasphemy at the same time. Because we hate blasphemy, you know. But the themes are really sad, but with a light. Using the song called In the Light Forever, there is something that can help you at one point, you know. And there are no particular themes, but that’s the solution. The song number, I don’t remember right now.

BM: Track number seven.

CC: Yeah, could be, yeah.

BM: Yeah. Well, what—you are credited with writing the music and/or lyrics for I think every track on the album.

CC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

BM: So a lot of this—you were saying it’s depressive, but there’s a way out kind of things—where were you emotionally when you were writing this? Were you going through difficult times, or were you writing this sort of third person, watching other people or the world go through difficult times? How did you come up with this?

CC: I’m not a sad guy.

BM: You don’t sound sad, no.

CC: [laughs] I’m not a sad guy. So I tried a few, to tell some stories, just tell that, yeah, you know sometimes there’s happy endings, sometimes not. But it’s not my mood. The songs don’t depend on my mood.

BM: I see. How ‘bout that vocal style, that so-called death metal growl sort of thing? How did you adopt that? What appealed to you about that style, and is that difficult for you to do for long periods of time?

CC: Um, no, I don’t. No, it’s not difficult. ‘Cause if you mix, you know, melodic voice with the screaming parts or growling parts, it’s not so difficult. Because when you sing in a death way, you don’t use your vocal chords, you know. Vocal strings, I don’t know. [laughs]

BM: Vocal chords, yeah.

CC: It’s only the throat.

BM: Oh, I see.

CC: You don’t use your voice. So that’s why, even during the concert, there are no particular difficulties for that.

BM: Ok, that’s cool.

CC: Of course, if I sing for two hours of course, it is quite impossible. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] What are you going to do when you guys are headlining your own tours? [laughs]

CC: [laughs] Um, I might have a substitution.

BM: Yeah. [laughs]

CC: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t care for the moment. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] You know, when you mentioned this earlier in our conversation, when your record label went bankrupt, and you lost everything, the Losing the Light Forever concept must have come into play here, didn’t it? I mean, how did you guys pull yourself out of that and say, “Let’s keep going on”?

CC: It was a hard period. But you know, we also had a tour cancelled in that period. And so we were kind of happy in a way, because without that Arise Records was, I think they had no potential to let us grown up, you know? And so we and Claus from Intromental Management, we said, “Ok, doesn’t matter guys, what’s going on. Do what you have to do.” We took it easy, you know?

BM: Oh, that’s great. I’m glad you did. When you look back on that whole experience of recording the album, are you pleased with it? Are you proud of it? Does it give you, do you think, “God, that was a pain in the ass?” What do you think when you look back on the whole Tales from Sadness period?

CC: Yeah, it was really great, because you know, it was the first time we got into a professional recording studio. And we had anyway a lot of fun. So we have happy rememberance. So nothing wrong.

BM: [laughs] That’s great.

CC: Yeah.

BM: Your musical influences, I think you mentioned them earlier on. People, when they write reviews, they say there’s a little Dream Theater in there, there’s a little, maybe, In Flames going on. Were those all your favorite sort of bands that kind of became the sound in your first album?

CC: Mmhm. Ok, uh, it was the period, I think one or two years before I discovered Children of Bodom. And I think in that album is the most influence. And other bands, I think Dream Theater, yes for Tales from Sadness, but not at all. I can’t agree when they say we are progressive metal. I don’t think so. But ok, if I have to choose some bands, some important bands for our style, I can say Children of Bodom, Iron Maiden. In Flames and Helloween, just for their Tales from Sadness, and then we changed.

BM: Really? That’s interesting that you say you don’t, you wouldn’t agree that you have a progressive metal sound. Why would you say that? What about it isn’t that to you?

CC: Because, especially for Flies & Lies—I’m talking about Flies & Lies. Tales from Sadness, ok, there’s something progressive metal. But you know, progressive metal is, now is gonna die. I think the best progressive metal has been Dream Theater and some other bands—

BM: Don’t say that too loudly.

CC: [laughs] Yeah. But I don’t feel like progressive metal. I don’t know why, but it’s, the time is, everything is quite direct, and progressive metal is not direct. And that’s why I don’t like to be, you know—

BM: Given that label?

CC: Defined like progressive metal.

BM: Well, let’s talk about Flies & Lies. I have the, I listened to the promo CD.

CC: Yeah.

BM: A couple of my first impressions are, first of all, I can’t believe you guys covered Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” [laughs]

CC: [laughs]

BM: How did you do that? [laughs]

CC: [laughs] I’ve always been a fan of Michael Jackson. Since I was a child. My childhood is Michael Jackson, not in a bad way.

BM: Yeah. [laughs]

CC: [laughs] Yeah, but I loved many, many songs from Michael Jackson, and “Beat It” was, I think, one of the hardest one. So, we said, “Ok, let’s try to make a cover from Michael Jackson. What kind of cover can we do? Oh, “Beat It.” Beat It.” It’s a hard rock song, I think. And why not? So we try to do it, and with a lot of beer in the studio, you know, [laughs], we made it.

BM: [laughs] It came out great, it really did. It sounds fun, like you guys had a great time with it.

CC: Yeah, yeah, of course. We didn’t know how to do it at the beginning, ‘cause we went in the studio, we were like, “Ok, we have to do this cover, what we have to do?” And then we have a lot of arrangements during the night, because we had the possibility to use studio B during the night. So we took a lot of beer and had a great time together, and tried to modify many passages and keyboards, and then that’s the result.

BM: Oh, it was great. You know, overall when I listen to this Flies & Lies, it sounds a lot more polished, a lot more direct.

CC: Yeah.

BM: But there’s a lot more extreme to it too. Like the first track kicks off big time with screams and growls.

CC: Yeah, yeah.

BM: So the contrast between your screams and the clean vocals, there seems to be more contrast to this album.

CC: Yeah.

BM: It’s a lot more polished, too. Is that because you guys are more mature now in your musicianship, or is that because of the producer?

CC: No, no. We have the whole idea of that album before we got in the studio, to make something harder and aggressive, and more direct than the first one. So it’s just our idea of more the heavy metal, that’s all.

BM: Does Flies & Lies have a theme? Where does the title of that come from?

CC: Mmhm?

BM: How did you come up with the title for that?

CC: The title, uh ok, the title, it’s not so easy. ‘cause you know, flies represent—it’s not good to say that—flies go and land in the shit, you know?

BM: Yeah. [laughs]

CC: And it’s um, metaphoric for the people who follow you know, the moda [fashion] and all that I really don’t like. So everybody follows that, and don’t use their brain, ok, your own brain. You don’t use your own brain, but just follow an idea that someone tell you. That’s why it’s the title of the song and the CD.

BM: So it’s a metaphor, then, is what you’re saying.

CC: It’s a metaphor, yeah.

BM: Interesting. Who did the cover art for this one? It’s kind of cool.

CC: Yeah, yeah. It’s always Mattias Noren.

BM: Oh really? That’s great.

CC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this time, we didn’t took pre-done you know, image. We had an idea, and we talk to him, “Ok, let’s work with this idea, Flies & Lies.” And with butterflies, that’s an image even for the first one, and that’s the result. We just asked what we wanted, and he did, I think, a great job.

BM: Oh he did, yeah. What’s it like—I’m actually going to do an interview with him later on too, just as sort of a bonus interview for all ProgPower fans, because he and Travis Smith tend to do a lot of album covers for the bands that play ProgPower.

CC: Yeah.

BM: What’s it like working with Mattias?

CC: What?

BM: What’s it like working with him?

CC: I say, we didn’t talk personally with him, ‘cause we, everything we made, we emailed, we had to use Intromental as a link, you know. So we said to Intromental what

NOTE: This is the end of Part One. For the entire interview with Raintime’s Claudio Coassin, see the official ProgPower USA VIII program.

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