It was towards the end of last year, on December 6 to be precise, that I asked my former colleague and friend, VM-Underground commander-in-chief Ricardo, if he was interested in Death and Pestilence’s later records besides the usual ‘Scream Bloody Gore’ and ‘Consuming Impulse’. For I had been introduced to the Italian Miscreance just moments before. They had completely blown my socks off with their debut album, ‘Convergence’. Although Ricardo didn’t share the same sense of enthusiasm as I did, for me the combination of exceptionally technical Death Metal and Thrashy rhythms wrapped in surprisingly good and catchy compositions is certainly not something that I stumble across every day. Now the album is celebrating its first anniversary and I, for my part, am happy to contribute to the festivities by putting some questions to the four gentlemen about it…
Hi there and welcome to The Whispering Darkness. Thank you for taking some time to answer a few questions, so let’s just start with the beginning. When I first heard about Miscreance it was when your debut album ‘Convergence’ was released last year, of course then I went listening to the previous recordings too. What do you think is the main difference from your first two recordings (your demo tape and split LP with Vile Apparition) and ‘Convergence’?
Hi and thank you for setting this up! The right chronological order shall be: Split-Demo-Album. Apart from the obvious production quality differences, these order permits to follow our musical growth pretty well, we started more thrashy and violent and we followed a path that led us to more complex (but still aggressive) music.
The split was a good occasion to give those old songs some justice, because when we were arranging the demo tape, in our ecstasy and insatiable need of hundreds of riffs/per song, we thought they were too “simple”, but after some little changes and rearrangements they came out pretty well!
One of the most striking things that I mentioned in my review for ‘Convergence’ is that the album clearly draws influences from the later albums from the Death discography, as well as some other bands that took the same musical path like Pestilence, Cynic and Atheist. In these times where Old School Death Metal seems to be much more popular, it feels refreshing to hear something that doesn’t draw from ‘Scream Bloody Gore’ or ‘Leprosy’. Were you always more attracted by the more technical approach of the Death Metal genre?
The answer depends on each one of us, for some it wasn’t love at first sight and for some others, yes.
Probably Atheist, Nocturnus and Invocator changed our perception of “technical” metal, because there’s this “metal shouldn’t be technical because it’s lame/lacks emotion/sucks”-thing that’s been taught to you since you’re a little metal kid. So we had to slowly realize that this is mostly bullshit, if you know what you’re doing.
To me, ‘Convergence’ is one of the best technical or more sophisticated Death Metal albums in recent times. It combines stunning instrumental control and an impressive capacity to channel that into actual songs. It is not uncommon for many good musicians with perfect technical abilities to achieve nothing more than a collection of riffs and musical ideas. ‘Convergence’ sounds like a smooth running whole where those same riffs and ideas come together to form great songs. How should I imagine the process of song writing goes with you guys?
Thank you! At first, as mentioned before, it was mostly about riff after riff. There’s this sort of Miscreance “Lost Album” which contained 5-6 songs (“Sentence To Eternity” is the only one who managed to survive) that were basically big cauldrons of unclear arrangements and lots of riffs.
We played A LOT before recording both demo and album, so, with the time passing by, we just understood that it wasn’t the right way to do it. Not that “Convergence” is lacking riffs, but we tried to work more on the transitions and all that stuff.
One of the other striking things about ‘Convergence’ is that its playing time is only half an hour. Something that always feels like a perfect playing time to me, but not always really obvious. Certainly not with a band that brings more than something that sounds like Massacre or Nunslaughter, often enough those bands opt for an album that not infrequently clocks in at an hour. What led you guys to keep the album so short and powerful?
Same as above: the album is really, really full of things to listen to, we had to give it an acceptable listening time. We’ve been told several times that the short album timing makes you want to give it a spin again, and it’s one of the best compliments we can receive, clearly better than “yeah cool but I skipped the last track”.
Although the rather obvious aforementioned influences from the extreme metal scope, to me a lot of the dynamics and almost otherworldly musical surprises of your compositions bear a strong resemblance to those of Rush. It might not have been all too uncommon to hear a bit of Rush in metal, but you guys have embedded it all differently into your music. Did I hear that correctly or am I completely wrong?
Finally someone noticed it! Jean is the supreme fan of Rush, but all of us are very into it. Although to be honest when we wrote “Convergence” we didn’t listen as assiduously to Rush, so certainly there was an influence but perhaps not as consciously as it is now.
Just like many of the “great old ones” from the late 80’s and early 90’s (technical) Death Metal scene had a strong sense of Thrash Metal in their overall sound – simply because Death Metal evolved from Thrash Metal being pushed into more extremes. The authenticity of Miscreance mainly lies within the feeling of having the same sort of Thrashy feel to its music. I am quite sure that I would find some Dark Angel, Sadus, Hellwitch, Infernäl Majesty, Believer or a band like Canadian Obliveon in your personal collections, right?
We ARE a thrash band, 100%. Not just because of the white high-tops shoes but all of our death metal sound is mostly derivative from what has been labeled “technical death metal” in the 90’s, which was mostly thrash (or at least thrashY) by the way.
We are not influenced by “pure” death metal even if we are super fans and listeners of it. Actually, in the composition process, Obliveon were a bigger influence than Death, for sure.
This month you can celebrate the first anniversary of ‘Convergence’ – celebrating it at the Metalitalia Festival alongside bands like Venom, Unleashed, Malevolent Creation and Pestilence. The album was first released through three separate labels for the vinyl, cassette tape and CD versions before being picked up by the much larger Season Of Mist label. The success of the album must have exceeded your expectations, how do you look back at this first year?
We always believed in this album, otherwise we couldn’t have managed to wait 2 years and a half without a singer, but yes, we were shocked to know how many people were waiting for the album and 1000x shocked when Season Of Mist wanted to reissue the album after like 6 months from the first release. It was a good debut we can say, but nothing without the help of Danex, Desert Wastelands and Unspeakable Axe!
Metalitalia Festival will be a unique occasion to celebrate the first -intense- year of “Convergence” and it’s our first time playing in such a big event, so we really cannot wait!
All four of you guys have a quite an impressive and wide range of previous musical experiences. Can you point out what you took from those past and present bands and embedded in Miscreance’s sound?
On a technical/musical level: not that much, because the styles of those bands were/are very different. Certainly playing with different people, however, has made us realize that this is a unique project and it only happens once in a lifetime to have a band like this, in addition to the fact that the quality of the music written is directly proportional to the friendship between the members.
Picking up a bit on the previous one. This is a question I always like to ask, but in the case of Miscreance, because of its musical exuberance, it could possibly yield some more interesting answers: what records have you purchased and/or listened to a lot lately?
Tommaso: Chic-Risqué, random Italo Disco and Ripping Corpse – Dreaming With The Dead
Andrea G: Banco del Mutuo Soccorso – Io sono nato libero, Voivod – Angel Rat
Jean-Claude: Mostly Bluegrass music
Andrea F: Phobophilic, Risk and Deus Vult
Now with the album being about a year old and being signed to Season Of Mist, the obvious question arises: where next to conqueror? What can we expect from the band in the upcoming period and do you feel that signing to Season Of Mist opens new/other doors that you think would have remained closed if you didn’t?
Definitely the goal is to try to surpass ourselves again by writing an album that can be a worthy continuation of “Convergence” without emulating it. We don’t want to reveal too many details now but we can say that we have already been in the works for some time and that it will be a concept album completely of our own imagination, it will be darker and faster than “Convergence” but still in our style.
Obviously signing with Season of Mist will make it easier and faster for us to reach a wider audience, we are super excited about that. But I don’t think without it would have precluded opportunities that we might have had anyway or further down the line.
That’s about it for now, so I would like to thank you for your time and effort to give us some insight into minds of Miscreance. In good tradition, I am leaving these last words to you…
First of all thank you for this interview and your time, we remember you all that you can follow us on our social medias:
Bandcamp: https://miscreance.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Miscreance
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/miscreance_official/
And you can also follow us at: GIGS, BARS, GRAVEYARDS
See you in time (and in space)!
