Italian progressive maestros Destrage are among some of the most unclassifiable bands out there. Having released their 2013 album Are You Kidding Me? No. It seems that the time has once again come for the band to undergo a transformation. Whilst supporting Sikth on their December tour we caught up with drummer Federico Paulovich and guitarist Ralph Salati. Speaking of their highlights of 2015, what Destrage as a band stands for now and how they intend to once again rewrite their own handbook on album number four we invite you to expect the unexpected.

Read the snippet below or listen to the full interview on our Soundcloud app below!

Compare this process with the previous process…

Federico : The previous process was that if anyone had an idea, we word start writing it down into Guitar Pro software or record it. Everybody worked on their own on a song and then everybody analysed the song and would say I like it, I don’t like it, let’s change this… But before this process we never played a song altogether before entering the studio, that’s the big news of the new record. It’s a more rock oriented approach, I think it’s going to be a more live enjoyable album than the others.

Ralph : Because it starts from that point!

Did You take that into account because you have been playing live a lot more now? 

Federico : We just realised that it was kind of senseless and impossible to go in the same direction of Are You Kidding Me? No. and do something better than that. So what made the most sense for us was to go into another different direction, we said what we wanted to say in that particular musical style because we just decided that we wanted to do something different because we don’t feel that we can  do any better than that. Doing something more difficult will sound cheesy probably, or stupid? Also because we are getting old and we like to enjoy and listen to more real songs. So what we wanted was to give people songs! To sing to, to listen to.

So will it be not less technical but technical in a different style? 

Federico : Exactly! Obviously sound will always be recognisable as Destrage music right but the purpose or the main goal of the new songs is different. More enjoyable to a wider range of people.

Ralph : Another thing, in this approach is that when you start with single ideas and then you build the song, you focus on, ok I am using that technique and I want to get this on, I want it to sound very weird, awkward and odd so do the worst thing starting from that. When you start from a structure and you go on a single part after during the arrangement process everything technical that you do in that point, it works for the song.

Before, we thought about what kind of content we wanted to put, inside the record but ts time we wanted to thi about delivering emotion more than ideas. Musical scenario us, communicate on a different level the difference between listening to music with the brain and guts and that’s what we wanted to do. Being said that it’s not going to be like

Ralph : Hard rock

Federico : Yeah or a Kiss record or whatever it’s still going to sound like Destrage of course and also it is very difficult to describe with words because it’s not finished and we don’t know how the finished product will sound like but that’s pretty much how we describe it.

Things will change…

Federico : Well if you think about the evolution from the first to the third record it makes sense, they sound really different one from the other!

That’s what you want thought I think you should have evolution.

Both : Of course

Otherwise a band gets stagnant and known for this which restricts their creativity…

Federico : Well you gotta understand we are people that get bored very easily to get bored of ourselves as musicians, I mean I always get bored with what I play!

The

Destrage are currently writing their brand new album