DOMINE
for
Painkiller Mag #5
January 2002
Interview with Enrico Paoli
Thanks to Emanuele
Gentile & EG - PUBBLICHE RELAZIONI;
The Legend Of The Power Supreme
It seems that Italian metal wave is unstoppable and brings us every day a new talented band. Today we focus our target on Domine and their new brillant album titled ‘Stormbringer Ruler’!
I remind the days when Enrico Paoli sent me demo-tapes of his band and now they’re to be one of most important export concerning Italian metal scene… I think that’s a good step forward! What makes special this band is their strong attachment to their metal personality offering nothing to trends or business market. The band has improved own fine blend of epic metal each album released and the history won’t be reached a stop. As matter of fact, the sound of Domine is a well-worked crunch where tipical heavy metal assault is mixed with delicious progressive touchs and majestic epicful harmonies… I think that owing to their new album Domine have reached a new chapter, but without lost any of their original trademarks. Domine are now a full-unit band succeeding in being appealing to just rock listeners too! What do you want more? Enrico Domine, band’s leader, has welcome our proposal to interview the band and what you’re reading is the result.
If I’m not wronin’…Domine reach their third charter…
“‘Stormbringer Ruler - The Legend Of The Power Supreme’ is our third album to-date and it comes after two years of ‘Champion Eternal’ release. It’s an album of pure epic power metal in a very original way. As matter of fact, we build up our sound owing to the fact we worked hard in these last years, ten years of existence! Our new album is raised up during two years of continous work coupled by an intense promotional work for ‘Dragonlord - Tales Of The Noble Steel’, an album highly important for us as it offered us entusiastic reviews and an unforgettable European tour with Agent Steel, Riot ed Anvil as well single gis together with Running Wild, Grave Digger, Rage, Gamma Ray and Iron Maiden! ‘Dragonlard’ has been licensed in Usa and the rest of world by Metal Blade. All that has given us the force to work at our best for the forthcoming new album. Our goal was to make a new album in the way of our previous one, but with some distinctive points in order to get it different from all our previous releases. ‘Stormbringer Ruler’ is an album of pure, hard and strong heavy metal following the great tradition of eighties couplet by new ideas to get the whole affair new and fresh. The album contains our strongest tracks to date such as ‘True Leder Of Men’ or the opener ‘The Hurricane Master’. Concerning this tracks notice the twin-drums attack! As well we feature tracks more harmonic such as ‘For Evermore’ or ‘Dawn Of A New Day’ with acoustical parts and crossed choruses. And don’t forget our tipical epic metal songs as ‘The Bearer Of The Black Sword’, ‘The Ride Of The Valkyries’ and ‘Horn Of Fate’ or the classic metal crunch of ‘The Fall Of The Spiral Tower’. It’s an album made by defenders for true defenders! We really hope it can reach the tastes of listeners. We’re simply entusistic of it!”
What’s about the state of health of the band?
“Quite good I’ve to admit! The line-up of Domine is on the road since two years and features five musicians quite happy due to a strong relationship. We’re a true band! All achieved live activity has given a special mood to the band… When we return from the European tour, the band was quite different than bifore… We learnt a lot touring for more than one months and sharing the stage with other bands. We wish to make a new album more proficent that our second one and I think that we reach the goal!”
Can we consider ‘Stormbringer Ruler’ as the definitive and ultimate Domine’s album?
“I don’t know… Many people say that… For many bands the release of thrid album is something special. It goes without doubts that our new album is the best album made by Domine. We’ve progressed drammatically concerning writing, live-performance and production. It’s the first album developping all our ideas without lacking in some parts… ‘Stormbringer Ruler’ is totally free of our old stuff apart a couple of guitar-braks… It’s been quite hard to make an album more powerful than ‘Dragonlard’, but we think that we succeed in getting such target!”
In which ways is your new album the natural herein of band’s concepì?
“It’s a new charter… It’s a step forward and I’ve to tall you that we’ve been forced to do it… We lived all recording/producing work with great entusiasm. We strongly wanted to record this album and it’s an album full of hope as we think that we’re now an important band in today metalrama…”
How does ‘Stormbringer Ruler’ reflect your history and your personality?
“In various ways… The album gets various keys as it’s been conceived in such way… It reflects our history as it’s an album showing all own love for the true roots of our sound, that’s Nwobhm or the first wave of American bands as well the memorable seventies hard rock! We love ‘til death all this sound… A sound creating the base of our sound… This sound leaded us when we’re writing the stuff of our new album. We wanted to write a concept enclosing classic, pure and simplicity! It goes without saying that our style is the result of our personality and our personal tastes… We succeed in releasing an album full of strong, athletic, proud, drammatic and honest heavy metal. We don’t give a fuck to rockstar’s attitude… We don’t like trends… We like to respect our being!”
When did you start to write the stuff for ‘Stormbringer Ruler’?
“We started durino the September of 2000. We’d tons of ideas in our rooms… We’ve already ready riffs, melodic lines and texts… We write all that stuff on Pc or block-notes! We decided to re-heard all that stuff in order to find out the most interesting ideas to build the foundations of our forthcoming album. As matter of fact, we worked to a couple of new tracks… In the meantime the band did some further dates and so we’ve forced to delay all our programs… Then we entered at New Sin Studios where we succeed in gathering all our ideas. We worked for three months without resting time, but in a totally peaceful location…”
In which ways did you develop the work for releasing your new album?
“It’s been the topical moment… That’s why in such moments the cohesion of band come out very naturally… I wrote a track, I prepared the cassettes with the main melodic lines and main riffs, I gave them to my pards and durino all those phases I’ve working at new stuff. Then we all rehearsed the tracks… ‘Stormbringer Ruler’ is an album raised in rehearsal-studios without the help of no technological supports! Mind up that I still write using an old 4-tracks Tascam!”
Would you like to descrive us the concept of the album?
“The CD is not a concept album as well other previous ones… It not a real concept-album, but some parts are binded among them… As a matter of fact, our album can be described as concept album as there’s continuità among own tracks… In reality, Domine are a concept epic band and that will be ‘til the band will stop own activities! Talking about our new album I’ve to tell you that there’re four tracks binded by a concept, that’s ‘Horn of Fate’, ‘The Bearer of the Black Sword’, ‘For Evermore’ and ‘Dawn of a New Day’ featuring a mini-concept titled ‘The Chronicles of the Black Sword - The End of an Era’, inspired by final part of Elric di Melnibonè saga. There are further tracks inspired other tales as ‘True Leader of Men’ taking origin by Dune of Frank Herbert. As you can see we get honour of our influences in a very honest way!”
How do you build up the screenplay for ‘Stormbringer Ruler’?
“In a very traditional way… I write parts of texts o titles… Then I start to mind up a full text in order to read again all the texts to found interesting thematics to deal in… A further step is to write the text to adapte it to vocals of our singer… I wrote the text of our new album is just a month with the help of Danie Powers, guitarist/singer of Powers Court. She also wrote the narrative parts of ‘Dawn Of A New Day’.”
Do you talk about past to escare from the reality?
“Ehm…we’re talking about an album, an artistic opus… And not concernine the life of the band’s members… I think that the texts are too realistic in a certain way! We succeed in featuring realistic histories in a context of fantasy… ‘Dawn Of A New Day’, for example, is a sort of farewell to the beloved persons with the hope to meet again them in a better life… The text is based on a tipical Irish ballad… In this album there’re many statements concernine honesty, honour, love, art, justice, unjustice, relationship, hate, war, victory, death, changes, law, chaos, despair, power! All these thematics are very real and strong… We don’t talk about elfs, hugly horse-men or matters like these!”
Is epic a sort of metaphoric translation of reality?
“Without any doubts! As I said before… As I can see we’ve the same opinion concerning the concept of our music! I found quite interesting the fact that the epic literature is always a way to discuss universal thematics. We’ve to referr to ‘Hyliade’ or ‘Odissey’!”
Why did you enclose in Japanese version a remake of Rainbow?
“bifore all, to respect the contract… Our Japanese licenser has always wanted a remake, and since our first album! We didn’t wish to lost one of our tracks, but we decided to record a song representing something special for us… We spent only 5 seconds to mind up to records ‘Queen Of the Reich’ of Queensryche for ‘Dragonlord’ and ‘Stargazer’ of Rainbow forr ‘Stormbringer Ruler’. For my thinking, ‘Stargazer’ is the very first epic metal tune never written! This tracks gets a drammatic and epic feeling that has influced the further steps of style. And after all it’s an hommage to Ritchie Blackmore, Ronnie James Dio and Cozy Powell, excellent musicians in all departements!”
When do the tropps of Domine start the military campaign in all the world?
“We have nothing precise a the moment! We’re working ‘til death to promote the album and we’re contacting some booking-agencies to find out the right tour bill. We want to renove the excitement of our tour with Riot, Anvil and Agent Steel! And yes…we want to return in Greece! If we’d do we’ll start now touring!”