Milan is not just the home of two top soccer clubs. The city also boasts the up and coming Progressive Gothic Metal Band Deva. Their album, 'BETWEEN LIFE AND DREAMS' recently picked up a glowing review on the Ravenheart website. I have now been given the opportunity to interview their awesome lead lady Beatrice, so here goes!
1 Hi Beatrice, can you give me a brief history regards the band, and how all you guys came together?
The project Deva begins in the 2003, when the guitarist Federico Salerno met the bassist Myriam Stallone. They started working on compositions with a keyboardist who is a friend of mine, so he introduced me to the band: at the time, Deva also included a male singer and a drummer. After I joined the band, it seemed to be necessary to come up with a stronger line-up: the male singer left the band and in the 2004, we found our keyboardist Marco Castiglione. But we had to wait until 2007 to have Thomas D’Alba at drums. In the meantime, we spent energies and time on compositions, arrangements and pre-productions for what would have become our debut album “Between Life And Dreams”. After the mixing of the songs (it was november 2009), we met RNC Music on Myspace. They liked “Your Voice” and they asked us for the entire album… and in a short time we had a record deal and a management contract with this label (Orion’s Belt / RNC Music) founded by Nico Spinosa, who spent more than 20 years at EMI and Ros Manica who spent her life with underground bands!
2 Are you or any other members of the band involved in other current musical projects?
Yes I am, because singing is my main job: opera and musicals mostly. I started to consider this activity as a real job when I went to Tokyo with Teatro La Scala (I was 15 years old). Recently I’ve been at the Edinburgh Theater Festival. I think it’s important, for a classical singer, to start working early. It's a very hard job, you have to be perfect in any kinds of environment… in other words, you have to be just perfect always. All of us like to explore the music, in every genre and every style, it helps each individual development. Our guitarist Federico is also a guitar teacher and he made the translation in italian of two important methods (one of Jazz theory and improvisation).
3 And what made you yourself get into music?
I began my music studies when I was 8. My mum introduced me to the children choir of Teatro La Scala. After this experience, I decided to make all my school years at Milan’s Conservatory “Giuseppe Verdi”. Sometimes, this life is pretty hard, especially when you are a child. But a strong passion cannot be changed!
4 Can you tell us more about your record 'Between Life and Dreams', and what was the studio experience like?
Well, I think it's one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced: it's strange for a classical singer to hear her own voice like in a studio experience. I mean, the perception of it changes, you must manage things in a different way from the routine: the voice is so different from the acoustic feeling and for many times I couldn’t but think "I can't believe it, is this what I sang?". After a few months, I understood how to record my vocal tracks… much better than before! I learned very much, in the studio, about my voice and my vocal technique. But I’m sure that for every one of us it has been an incredible experience, different from everything we experienced before.
5 And where did you record the album?
The places where we recorded, mixed and mastered are more than one. They are at least four: our Studio, Federico’s home, SteelNight Studios and Massive Arts. We did not have enough money to rent a studio when we started to work on it, so we decided to record it by ourselves in an affordable situation, like a own studio, but for the mixing we’ve been helped by the talent of the sound engineer Lorenzo Ardoni, who followed us also in the mastering with Alberto Cutolo, who’s one of the most important mastering sound engineers in Milano.
6 For any of our readers unfamiliar with the music on the album,
how would you describe it?
Between Life And Dreams is, for what it means to me, very emotional: maybe the only example of its genre (because very few people mix an opera voice with progressive metal). During the composition, but mostly when we were mixing, we tried to think about all the kinds of listeners, from the expert ones to the newcomers, trying to satisfy all of them. Between Life And Dreams is definitely a complex work: both under the composition and the lyrics aspects, from the melodies to the Arrangements, everything has been properly analyzed so to make this album "special”, different from what we are used to listen to, but not forgetting the great music that led us to this album. I think that our most powerful element is the variety of inspirations we have, from symphonic music to opera, from soundtracks to heavy metal, we’ve never been frightened by the idea of mixing them all in a single project (or song!) so many different styles, creating, in the end and somehow, our “Deva” style: it’s like a brand, that you can see in all our songs. In-fact, it took several years to achieve this result and some tracks of the album have literally been re-arranged after the drums were recorded (that’s what Happened!:P). Between Life And Dreams is like a little world that needs to be discovered step by step, that will guide you through its music, always depicting something new.
7 Do you yourself have any tracks on the album that you would class as your personal faves?
Good question! Yes, there are two tracks I particularly love: “Your Voice” and “Dancing Lane”. I wrote “Your Voice” with Federico, one year after the death of one of my childhood’s best friends. He died very young, due to bad friends he made who led him to drug addiction. It was so hard to write this song, but I would like to remember him, in it. For “Dancing Lane” the story is different: this was the first song I chose to record but, of course, it turned to be more difficult than I thought, so after trying a whole day, I decided to start with another one, then I was back to it one month later. To be honest, even when I finished the recording of “Dancing Lane”, I wasn’t really thinking “this is my favourite”, but now I longing for it on every concert: I like to sing this song cause it incorporates a lot of different styles (funky, heavy metal, symphonic...) and when I sing the refrain I really “close my eyes…”
8 Your vocals Beatrice are awesome. Have you had any specialist vocal training?
Yes, I study hours and hours every day, especially for the breathing technique. It’s definitely necessary to have a good breathing technique, when you want to be a singer. I also have a singing trainer, who guides me through my studies. In this job, you never stop learning.
9 Apart from Ravenheart Music, have you had any media reaction to the record, and if so, what has this reaction been like?
The media reaction, especially abroad, has been amazing! I mean, it’s only the beginning because Between Life And Dreams was only released a couple of months ago, but we are receiving encouraging feedbacks from a lot of countries: Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, Holland, Poland, basically all of Latin America, USA, Canada… and of course from the UK, which for us is an incredible result: the average level of listening and playing music, in the UK, is above the standard and there are so many bands, even with no contract, that are great! For us it’s an honour to get the attention of such good listeners, do you know what I mean?
10 Although you have another lady in the band (Myriam - Bass and backing vox), what is it like to be a female in a band surrounded by (gorgeous LOL) guys?
It’s very funny. We are all like brothers and sisters, we have almost the same age and I like to consider Deva just like a sort of a “big family”.
Normally, you have a front woman who is elegant, sexy, aggressive,
sensual...all in one person. For Miriam and I, it’s a bit different: she’s aggressive, she can be very sensual and I’m elegant and charming. I like to be more dreamy than what we normally see on stage. Federico says that, during a concert, we can capture the attention of the audience, because the harmony set by the combination of having Miriam and me on stage, is catchy, like a magnet.
11 And being a female fronting a rock/metal band. Although there
shouldn't be, is there ever a problem with being taken seriously?
Every time, in this job, it’s very difficult. The female image in the music world, usually, is synonym of sex. A lot of incredible singers changed their look or style during their careers. I’d like to be different: in concert, I like to wear a long dress and I’m studying to find specific kind of movements, which allow me to keep elegance and softness while I sing, resulting sensual but never vulgar.
12 Italy seems to me to be a growing hotbed of rock and metal music, most famously being known as the home of Lacuna Coil. What is the rock music/metal scene, more particularly the female fronted scene like in Italy at the moment?
Unfortunately, the heavy metal scene here doesn’t always have the strong support it receives from other countries, like the UK, Brazil, Holland, Germany or even Russia and further Japan. There are a lot of listeners and fans, but not many good clubs to play this kind of music. Even in a big city like Milan (Deva and Lacuna Coil both come from this town) there are no more than four or five places, at the moment, where we could make a good show. Also the majors, in the discography, are not really heavy metal oriented, they invest more on commercial projects. For the radios and the tv music channels, it’s just the same. I don’t know what’s going to happen for the female fronted bands, since Evanescence, Lacuna Coil, Nightwish and other bands with a similar line-up came up to a global success, but I can tell you that the success of many important italian bands starts abroad, not here.
13 Musically, who or what are your musical inspirations, and what type of music do you listen to when you are relaxing?
When I started to write the songs for Between Life And Dreams, I wasn’t exactly a metal music listener, so my inspiration was mostly the classical music of my childhood. Now I like listening to all the music styles, in particular baroque music and progressive metal.
14 And do you have any hobbies when not making music?
Not really, but one year ago I started the direction of a theatrical piece with one of my university teachers, who is also a director. I did two shows: “The human voice” of J. Cocteau and a beautiful piece made out with chinese shadows.
15 What band/artist would you just love to tour with and hang out with?
We are all fans of Dream Theater, Serj Tankian, Iron Maiden, Metallica… I think it would be a strong emotion to share the stage with these artists. If I had to choose just one, I’d say Metallica. But I also think that we’d have to learn something (probably very much) from each one of the big bands, in heavy metal as in any other style and share a little piece of their lives on tour, on stage, in a festival, or whatsoever, would be big experience. Recently, we’ve been very close to share the stage with big names on the Italian leg of their tours, but in the end it didn’t happen: Megadeth chose another band, closer to their sound, Heaven & Hell, well you know what happened and Stone Temple Pilots asked for a tour support but a few days before decided to do without. But I’m sure it will happen sooner or later
16 What are your band's plans for the future regards touring and further recordings?
Well, it’s a bit too early to talk about a tour or new recordings, but I won’t hide that we are working on planning both! I know that Federico has already written down some new lyrics and we are already working on new songs. I’d prefer not to talk about it anyway, just a little bit of superstition.
17 And to finish, is there anything you would like to say to readers of this website regards anything really :) ?
“Between life and dreams” will thrill you...and a kiss to everybody.
There we have it. They are all awesome people, even the people at the label (thanks Nico). Check out their myspace at www.myspace.com/infodeva
Dave Smith (Jun 26, 2010)