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Throne of Flesh Interview With Flavio Tempesta

When I heard the new EP from the death metal band Throne of Flesh, I knew an interview was in order. I reached out to guitar player Flavio Tempesta and here is what he said to my questions..

Where were you born and where did you grow up? What sort of kid were you growing up?

FT: Hi, here is Flavio, guitarist of Throne of Flesh. I was born in Genzano, a little town in a beautiful green place called Castelli Romani, near Rome. I was a kid with a lot of passions who had the fortune to have a wonderful family behind him.

I was fascinated by comics, books, horror/sci-fi films, and music.

What were you like as a teenager and what did you want to be when you were growing up?

FT: When I was a teenager I was absorbed by extreme music but I never thought or dreamed of being a professional musician. For me was more important to express myself with music improving my capacity to play guitar and write music. And today, for me this remains the most important thing in my musical path yet.

What were the 1st styles of music that you heard? What did you think of it when you heard it?

FT: I remember my father’s tapes in our family car: Lucio Dalla, Fabrizio De Andrè, Antonello Venditti, Zucchero, and some other Italian singers who I liked a lot.

Then in high school, I discovered Guns & Roses, Iron Maiden, Slayer, and heavy metal of the mid/ late 1980s years. My favorite band was Megadeth, I was obsessed with Dave Mustaine, his guitar playing, and his attitude.

Later in 1990, thanks to a classmate, I casually discovered Napalm Death and I entered the realm of extreme metal: I fell in love with early Sepultura, Obituary, Deicide, Morbid Angel, Death, and all the amazing bands of the prime death metal wave.

My life changed at that moment.

When did you discover rock or heavy metal? What were some of the 1st bands that you heard and liked? Are you still a fan of any of these bands today?

FT: Megadeth. My teenage passion is still alive, it’s different but is still here. Another two fundamental artists for my music development were Chuck Schuldiner and Trey Azaghtoth. Death and Morbid Angel are two big influences on my songwriting.

Now what led you to discover the wonderful ha ha word of underground metal? What did you think of this style the 1st time you heard it? Were you into it right away or did it take a few listens until you grasped it and then got into it?

FT: Was an instant love. I was crazy curious to hear new bands and different genres every day, so I was deep into tape trading, ‘zines, and stuff like that.

In 1995 with my first band Disease, we released our first demo tape so thanks to a massive demo-trading I entered into contact with a lot of underground bands and guys from all over the world.
It was amazing!

Flavio Tempesta
Flavio Tempesta

What were some of the early bands that you heard and are you still a fan of these bands these days?

FT: I am still a fan of the old death metal bands that I grew up on, some of them are still making good music today but I prefer the old great stuff.

Now does Italy have a strong underground metal scene where touring bands play and music is for sale in record shops still?

FT: I don’t know what is going on in the Italian scene today. But I can say that the Italian underground of the first/mid 90 was amazing: Natron, Undertaker, Aydra, Sadist, Thy Nature, Electrocution, Glacial Fear, and a lot of other incredible names that made the story of extreme metal in Italy. That stuff was quite impossible to find in the stores so you could have it just writing directly to the bands, or going to the gigs and buying from them.

Now how did each of you decide to pick up what instrument you are playing and what are your favorite players of your respective instrument? For the singer if he is answering, how did you know you wanted to be a singer, and who are some of your favorite singers?

FT: My father played in a band when he was young and in my house, there was a classical guitar that I use to learn the first steps to play. I’m completely autodidact, everything I learned was stolen by my eyes from what I’ve seen or heard from the artists and bands I love. I elaborate on influences and different inputs to create my stuff.

Now all of you have been in previous bands and some of you are in current bands besides Throne of Flesh. How did all of you end up finding each other and when you did was it decided the 3 of you wanted to form a band?

FT: I played with Joseph in a death/grind band called Clg from 2002 to 2007.

And I played with Tat0 and Ale in Zora from 2009 to 2011. We have a great friendship and musical chemistry so when I started to write music for what will become Throne of Flesh was natural for me to involve them.

Now how did you come up with the name and the logo of the band?

FT: The name and the logo are something that has to bring you to the old-school death metal world. Welcome back to the 90s!

Now how soon had the band been together when you began to start to write tunes that ended up on the debut release which was called “Dogma”?

FT: I started to write the songs for Dogma in the late spring of 2018. In the summer of the same year, we worked together on the material and then we recorded our first Demo which was released at the beginning of 2019. We cured the recording and the mastering process for either Dogma or Dust.

Now with you guys in other bands, how hard was/is it to write songs where they don’t become riffs or songs from the other bands you’re in?

FT: Throne of Flesh has a particular mortiferous mood and identity so we know well what stuff belongs to the band.

Now you mentioned loving Megedeth and Morbid Angel earlier in the interview. How many times have you seen each band live and do you still like the current releases of the band?

FT: I’ve seen Megadeth many times, from the mid-90s to these days. Morbid Angel just a few times many years ago, I’ve seen them with Vincent and Tucker, but I prefer the singer of the first glorious era of the band. I‘ve forgotten to mention Slayer, another big endless love: maybe they are the metal band I’ve seen the most times, they were amazing as every person well knows.

I missed Death, I’ve never had to see them on stage. Also Celtic Frost, another band that I love, I’ve never seen them on stage. About the new releases from the old band, It’s often a compromise between their effective actual music quality and our nostalgia for the old good days: in general, these bands can be still good but not as they were 20 or 30 years ago.

By the way, Megadeth’s last release is cool and fun to listen to, Morbid Angel’s last album was not exceptional but still a more than acceptable release.

Now the band didn’t release anything until a one-song single in 2022. Was this just released to keep the band name out there?

FT: We completed the work for Dust at the end of May 22 so the album was ready a lot of time before the release for Great Dane Records. The first single was released just to promote the album, we never considered about to leave our name alive ‘cause we are just an underground band, so we don’t give a shit about how is rilevant our name ahaha!

Also, you had a 4 piece band now as you did most of the stuff on the debut. Where did you find the newer members and did you get a chance to play out live with this new and full line-up?

FT: Alessandro, the drummer on Dust, is a long-time friend and an old bandmate:, he and Tat0 played together in Zora between 2009 and 2011, and we had a lot of fun playing together. Tat0 is still active with this amazing band and continues to release a lot of great, brutal death metal albums.

About live shows, Throne of Flesh has never played live until now. We live in different places so we could not meet each other for rehearsals or to organize live shows or tours. But nothing is precluded, I would like to play live with Throne of Flesh because I’m certain of our chemistry because we played together in other bands and it works great. I hope this can happen, time will tell.

Throne of Flesh
Throne of Flesh

Now earlier this year you hooked up with Great Dane Records and released a fantastic release simply called “Dust”. Why this title and who came up with the cover idea for it?

FT: Throne of Flesh’s concept is about exploring rituals of death in different cultures and countries.

We followed certain themes from the Dogma ep, and in the research for inspiration, we found the photo that became the cover of the album. The face of the mummy and the horrific expression inspired the idea of something frozen in eternity but still communicative and scary, a monstrosity covered by the dust of time.

Dust represents something ineluctable, the yellow that dominates the tonality of the artwork is the sand of time that runs to the inevitable end of everything, death.

Joseph, our singer, entered more deeply into the argument and every song tells a different aspect and modality of which certain populations approach to the funeral rites and death in general.

These stories are unbelievable and fucking scary, the photos in the booklet show that.

How did you end up hooking up with them? Did they find you or did you find them?

FT: Tat0 had contacts with Ralph, the boss of Great Dane Records, and worked very well with him for the release of his other projects. So was natural for Tat0 to propose Throne of Flesh to Ralph for Dust. Great Dane Records is the best choice for us, Ralph is a true fan of Death Metal, he has released Dust in an amazing digipak and he’s doing a hell of a job promoting the album. I hope to release our first full-length for him ‘cause he is the best around!

How long did it take for all the songs to get ready and how long were you in the studio for? Looking back, now that it has been out for a few months, how happy are you with it?

FT: We self-produced the album in my home studio so we worked directly in every phase of the production.

Today, thanks to the technological improvements in the world of home studios we have a lot of opportunities to produce your music on your very own bringing good results.

If I think at when I recorded the first demos for my bands in the mid of 90s when the studios were very expensive and in the majority of cases you had to relational with audio engineers who never heard extreme metal, I’m more than convinced that today is is the golden age for musicians. I see a lot of underground bands spending a lot of money to record and promote their album without objectively evaluating the quality of their music. The scene is saturated with records that no one hears, but everyone thinks they’re pros and ready for the big game just because they pay for something.

We don’t give a shit about being professionals, but we care a lot about our music because it’s a passion that we have lived for a lifetime regardless of results and success. This is death metal not the fucking X-factor.

Recording an album in a professional studio may guarantee a professional result, but we don’t care about it, we are not professionals, we play only for passion but we can do the best we can with our possibility. And Dust sounds really good, we love it! The songs were written by me during the summer of 2021 and we complete the work in May 2022. We are very happy with the final result.

Dust is very different from our previous work Dogma ‘cause we wanted to homage to an early period in death metal history: we’ve chosen more primitive and simple songwriting like it was in the late 80s and first ’90s death metal. Dogma is more “modern” and technical in the riffing and we love how the album sounds, but Dust had to sound rougher, awkward, and dirty, with a gloomy and deadly atmosphere. We are really satisfied with the result

Are you able to play out live much? How do you feel you are as a live band?

FT: As I said before, we’ve never played live yet, but things can change, and could be cool to do it

Do many people attend underground shows where you are based these days?

FT: It’s strange, people are more into the big events like Iron Maiden and those old dinosaurs than the underground shows.

Here in Italy, the situation is bad, with few places where we can do shows and a complicated relationship with who manages the venues that do live shows.

There are many groups and they kill each other to find a place to play, agreeing to do it in very bad conditions and most of the time without being paid.

Clearly, at the underground level, whoever tries to play shows around doesn’t do it for money but for self-promotion and to grow the name of his band. But what I always expect and pretend from venue managers is respect: respect for people must always be present and unfortunately, sometimes there isn’t even this…

Please plug any merchandise you have for sale and where can people find your excellent new release? Is the debut release “Dogma” still for sale? Are t-shirts for sale?

FT: At the moment we don’t have any T-shirts, we are thinking about many things and it would be nice to print some with a nice old-school death metal design.

At the moment we are focused on writing our first full-length, and we have many ideas, it will certainly be different from Dust but it will have the same darkness and morbidity.

Please plug any social media sites you have.

FT: We are not the most active band on social media, so sorry if you can find our selfies or photographic services where we appear evil and menacing ahaha!

We try to let our music speaks for us without any bullshit.

Our official pages are:

http://www.facebook.com/throneofflesh

throneofflesh.bandcamp.com

Flavio horns up for doing this interview. Best of luck with the band going forward and any last words to say to wrap this up?

FT: Throne of Flesh will return soon to continue our exploration of what was death metal in the 90s.

We don’t need to be the fastest, down-tuned, guttural band in the world, we just want to bring you the rotting misery and the scariest, obscure atmosphere of the shrines of death through our music.

Cheers from Italy!

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