We caught up with Subliminal Fear to discuss their new album Escape From Leviathan – check it out and get involved below!
You’ve welcomed new members into the fold – how have they affected the writing process on the new album?
Carmine: Hello, it’s a pleasure to discuss the new album.
The new members didn’t have a part in writing the new material but they are very important in preparing live shows and in finalizing our work in the best way.
Matteo De Bellis is a great screamer and the two voices complete each other. Now SF has two vocalists and this is important to realize the songs in the same way as we did on the album.
The other new entry in our line-up is Ruggiero Lanotte on drums. He started with us after the songwriting process was finished. We’ve known him for a long time and we knew that he is very talented. His work with us is absolutely amazing and it has proved to be the best choice for us.
No line-up changes occurred during the writing process. We worked very hard in our studio for two and a half years and you can hear the result of this in Escape from Leviathan. When we started to talk about writing new music, and when I returned to the band, we felt that many things had changed. We needed to involve our sound in something personal and we worked hard on that.
The electronic parts and synths have become a very important element in our new sound. Our buddy Botys Beezart co-produced this album with us and has arranged it perfectly. He is a really talented musician and we thank him for being a part of this project much like a sixth member of the band.
Was there a particular instrument used to write the album?
Carmine: We worked in a different way than on our previous albums. Before we had a traditional approach to writing material. Jamming riffs together and then finding the right structure or melody. Now we like to create the main themes and record them before we play together.
This way we can optimize the parts of a song and we can all hear them over to do all changes we want until we are satisfied with the result. Our studio tech helped us to grow as musicians, not only by writing better songs but also with producing a better sound quality.
Alessio: No, nothing in particular, but the computer has definitely been a very useful tool since it allowed us to record many different attempts. We had the chance to listen to all the ideas we generated and highlight the best ones.
There’s also a few guests on the new album, how did they get involved?
Alessio: We addressed artists that we appreciate. Fortunately today it is easier to get in touch with people from the other side of the world and at the same time it is also easier to collaborate with them. They were very well prepared and have made a fantastic job.
Going deeper into the concept behind Escape from Leviathan. It’s described as “a futuristic and apocalyptic vision of the world and the society” so what became of our world?
Carmine: It’s very hard to imagine our world in the far future. We tried to imagine it through negative eyes. The album’s concept is not optimistic. The future of the world is a negative time because our present is full of fears and hatreds.
Alessio: The world described in the album is not necessarily from our contemporary world, but it will be similarly fated if we let others influence our thoughts by offering us a surrogate happiness that in the end will only decay into sadness. In this context the name of our band does not refer to a fear that we want to instil in others but to the fear that others try to force on us, and we find ourselves fighting against that.
Can you tell us more about developing the concept? How did the story come together, from inspiration to an album?
Carmine: With the new style, we also changed the topic of our lyrics that you will find through the songs. It’s not exactly a story but many stories linked between them. Escape from Leviathan is a metaphor for the escape from society.
We imagined it like a primordial creature that evolved to eat us. The concept talks about a society that guides us and controls us with new technologies and fake ideologies. Humans are not conscious of the evil they do to each other and also about the societies and machines that subconsciously manipulate them.
There are also some references made towards humanity’s impossibility to govern itself. For inspiration I used famous sci-fi movies but also interpreted my own personal thoughts about our present day society into the story.
Did Donald Trump win presidency of America?
Alessio: Haha! In that case we’ll add a bonus track called Escape from Trump, but joking aside I really don’t know what we have to hope for with the future of the U.S.A.
Carmine: I hope it will not be a topic inspiring the sequel to Escape From Leviathan.
What happens to extreme metal in the dark future?
Carmine: In the future I think metal music will be angrier. The darker our present, the angrier we write. I also mean the contents and concepts, so not just the music. Our inspiration is from what we see on the streets and on TV. In reality these topics are terrifying. It’s scarier than in fantasy stories.
How does Talk Talk fit into a new tomorrow?
Carmine: We chose to cover this Talk Talk song because we love 80’s music. Our interpretation of the lyrics is in a futuristic way, of course, and I thought it would be perfect between the other songs. For me, especially with some synths and melodies, you can hear nostalgia. Living in Another World fit perfectly within the tracklist, more than a cover song being used like a bonus track.
Name a movie that helped bring the Leviathan to life.
Carmine: We can name many of movies that inspired us for the album’s concept. We are addicted to sci-fi movies and futuristic themes.
Alessio: Only one? 1984. The movie and the book. A list could go on forever: Alien, Ghost in the Shell… I’m addicted to dystopian and sci-fi movies.
Who would you get to direct a film adaptation of Escape from Leviathan?
Carmine: Well, we need someone like Ridley Scott! In his most famous movies he showed us to be a man with a visionary mind and with eyes projected into a hypothetical future he was able to create some very cruel and dramatic scenes. Escape from Leviathan would be a cross between Alien and Blade Runner with him at the helm.
What age rating would the film have?
Alessio: I do not think a limitation related to explicit or violent content would be required as only those who are ready to rebel against a reality of misdirection and false facts would watch it. Otherwise reality would collapse under the weight of the reality we described.
