Interview with Straight to Pain by Dave WolffHow long has Straight to Pain been active? What is the connection between the band's name and their music?
STP was formed in 2009 by Simone [Luise, vocals], Stefano [Ravera, drums], and our first guitarist Nicolò [Varaldo] as a hardcore\metalcore act heavily inspired by bands such as Parkway Drive. A lot happened since then, but yeah, it’s been fifteen years!
At the time, the idea was to convey the sense of our sound being generally “direct”, straight to the point: just mosh pit-inducing metalcore with aggressive riffs, groovy drums, and harsh vocals. That was our identity at the time, and despite all the evolution we’ve gone through since then I’d say this aggressive, groovy “core” is still the fundamental aspect of our music.
Do your lyrics have any connection to the name? Are they perceived as negative even when they weren't intended to be so?
I wouldn’t say they do. Simone usually comes up with a concept that spans through the whole album, but only in the case of “Earthless” were the lyrics truly “straight to pain”, i.e. dark, negative, or painful. We don’t necessarily try to be that. We do have a tendency to express feelings of anger, or sadness, or mystery, but there’s often an optimistic side to it, a way out from those very feelings, even if sometimes there needs to be a catastrophic change for that to happen. For example, “Beyond the Origin” and “Sky Seekers” are actually quite hopeful! We don’t really get that many comments regarding the contents of our lyrics, but I think most casual listeners expect negative lyrics simply by the nature of our genre and our sound.
I’m not familiar with Parkway Drive. Tell the readers about how they influenced your sound.
Parkway Drive were one of the most impactful in the wave of bands that came out at the time, that blended heavy metal and death metal with the more direct and catchy elements of hardcore punk. It was that entire wave of the early ‘00s that inspired us rather than Parkway Drive alone, I’d say. You can hear the influence in the riffs, the drumming, and the breakdowns, if you listen to some of their songs from that era. We were already into stuff like nu metal, punk, even rap, and that wave felt like a mix of everything we liked. Of course, even back then we never imposed strict limits onto ourselves; not having to stick to a single genre’s standard allowed us more creative freedom and let us fit in with both the metal and the punk local scenes!
What attracted the band to metalcore? At present, how popular is the genre in Italy?
In Nico, Simone and Stefano’s case, it was that simple blend of aggressive guitars and vocals with the catchiness of punk. A “best of both worlds” sort of deal. Marco and Thomas were drawn to it later on; in Marco’s case, STP was his first real experience with the genre and he mostly fell in love with its adaptability to a lot of different styles, and its ability to fuse harsh vocals with melody and experimentation; he sees it as a perfect “container” in which all the stuff he likes (power metal, prog metal, neoclassical metal, melodic death metal, J-pop, classical music) can coexist productively.
In Italy, I’d say it’s as popular as it was back then, that is, not a lot. But again, so much of the modern metal scene is an offspring of metalcore in one way or another that it’s hard to draw a line.
What is the band's goal for the long haul?
Unfortunately, the state of the underground music scene in Italy is such that it’s become overwhelmingly difficult for a band to really emerge and make it to the pro or semi-pro level. Add to that that we’re all adults with families, commitments, jobs etc., and you can see how the money and time investment necessary for that kind of jump is beyond the possibilities of most bands. So, I would say our goal is simply to make the music we love without letting too many thoughts of business and marketability distract us: after the Covid pandemic basically shattered all our plans for touring and supporting Cycles, we’ve decided that the most important thing, for us, is simply to make the music we love and to let all our creative ideas, whatever they may be, run wild. So, in other words, I wouldn’t say that the STP family has any particular long-term goal in mind, except this: make music together and release it to the world for as long as our well of ideas doesn’t go dry.
Despite the notion that being a musician is a phase, explain your reasons for continuing the band up to the present.
I think the best way to describe it is that it’s a necessity. If you’re passionate about music, after you reach a certain “level”, just listening to it passively isn’t enough. Playing your instruments, studying to expand your knowledge of how it works, composing your own stuff, and hearing it take form through the collaborative effort of others like you, is something that you need to do. It’s an urge. It’s like a huge pot full of ideas, curiosity, and feelings, boiling and bubbling endlessly inside you: you cannot but give it some form of outlet. Music is too good a way to express your feelings to give it up. I claim it isn’t really a choice: as Slavoj Zizek says, the most radical and passionate decisions in your life, like falling in love, aren’t perceived as free choices at all.
Of course, the reason we keep going as a band is because we work really well together: there’s a unique chemistry between us that’s superior to the sum of our individual parts, and we believe this chemistry still has a lot to say. All of us play in other music projects as well, and in Marco’s and Stefano’s case they’re much more successful, but our true “home” is STP.
Describe how you balance being a musician and raising a family.
It isn’t easy at all, balancing band activities against the commitments of adulthood. To be honest, none of us have children yet (cats don’t count, right?), and only two of us are married, but all the bullcrap of jobs and bills and appointments etc. is there. Sometimes we have very little time and energy to dedicate to Straight to Pain. Sometimes we cancel rehearsals because stuff comes up, or because we’re too tired. But… you know, we always make some time for it. Even if just an hour or two a week.
Two things really help: the first is that our partners and families understand how important this passion is for us, they share it, and they support us through it; this in turn keeps us anchored to our commitment towards them; the second is that everybody in STP does his part, we share band duties based on what we’re good at so none of us is overwhelmed.
The flip side of the coin is that progress tends to be very slow: it can take us months to finish one song! But we don’t care, as long as we keep doing what we love.
How much has the band evolved? And how important was maintaining your metalcore roots?
Our sound has evolved along with our musical tastes, with the stuff we listen to, and with our personal evolution as musicians. There never was a moment when we’d up and say “from now on we become this or that”: it was always one of us throwing in a new idea or inspiration (“hey, I’ve just studied this thing, can we try it?”), the rest adapting it, and at the end of the process the band as a whole going “yeah, it sounds good!”.
The metalcore/hardcore roots were only really evident on our first ever demo, already in “Horizon Calls” we were being described as “unorthodox”; “Earthless” saw us trying a more groovy and aggressive sound, with Marco’s prog and melodic elements already trickling in; in “Cycles”, we leant more and more into Thomas’s unorthodox riffing, Simone’s range and lyrical ideas, Marco’s eclecticism and melodic taste, Stefano’s creativity and flexibility, and of course Andrea’s clear head and simplicity to keep us from going too far; also, we were lucky enough to meet Fabio Palombi of Blackwave Studio and Fabio Cuomo, two true geniuses that shaped our sound and gave it its best possible form in ways we couldn’t even imagine.
In a way, though, “Closing Cycles” was our ultimate turning point: it was as we worked on those tracks that we decided to let go of all thoughts of “branding” and “marketability” and just put in our songs whatever we felt like putting in. The results of this “new course” haven’t been recorded yet, but I think people will be surprised.
I would say that metalcore is important to us only in the sense that it is where Stefano and Simone’s roots as metalheads lie, and in the sense that it’s the easiest way to describe us, now that we don’t really know how to label ourselves. We don’t care much for to the idea of sticking to a blueprint, metalcore simply happens to be the common-ground “starting point” that we all like. Also, most modern metal has its roots in some form or another of metalcore, innit? So its influence is almost impossible to shake off.
According to Encyclopedia Metallum, STP released the EP “Leave It to the Sea” in 2012. Is it considered an official release?
It was our first ever official release. It can still be found on YouTube. We even had a physical release back then, though a very limited one. Most of its tracks ended up appearing again on “Horizon Calls”, so even we sometimes forget it exists, haha.
It's more common for metal bands to combine genres, particularly since Anthrax worked with Public Enemy. Has your evolution as we discussed it been a natural process?
Metal is such a flexible genre that it’s got endless possibilities to combine subgenres within the metal field and even outside of it. One of our members is a fan of Babymetal and Electric Callboy, and another one of us likes trap metal.
As for our evolution, it has very much been a natural process. Every step of it was born of one of us bringing some new inspiration of his into the rehearsal room, and all of these new ideas just compounding. “Hey there’s this thing that band X and Y do, why don’t we try it?”, or “hey I’ve been studying this musical form or this technique, mind if I try to write a section with it?”, or “I’ve been reading this thing and I’d like to write some lyrics about it!” things like that. The cool part is that we always try to “incorporate” each of these steps into our existing sound, rather than just sticking them on top of it like an add-on. Some of those things stick and get incorporated into the “core sound” that we use as our starting point, others are “put aside in our inventory”, so to speak, but still…
Does your process of writing material allow the band more creative freedom?
Generally yes, because time constraints or marketability concerns sometimes force you to take shortcuts of sorts that you might not be 100% happy with. This happens even despite having a long writing process, since the production phase will always ask you to get to a finished product within a reasonable time limit. That’s why it’s so important to meet the right producer!
Still, there needs to be an equilibrium. As Orson Wells said, “the absence of limits is the enemy of art”. Sometimes, by taking too long you run the risk of losing sight of what a song’s core concept is, and it turns out a mess. After we ran into this problem a couple of times, we realized that each song we write needs to have a “leader”, so to speak. One of us who has the general idea of the song firm in his head to reel the rest of us in if we go too far.
Why did the band and Nicolò Varaldo part company?
Simply enough, he didn’t feel like being in a band anymore. He likes playing guitar for the fun of it but the rehearsals, the process of composition, the recording, the “band discipline”, it’s not something he particularly enjoys. He doesn’t even like playing live! We still hang out sometimes, he and Stefano in particular are good friends, but he has other priorities in life.
How many other lineup changes has the band had? Does STP to have a stronger lineup that’s more committed to expanding?
Our first bassist Emiliano [D’Amico] left the band to be replaced by Riccardo [Colman] and then Marco [Salvadori]. Then Nicolo [Varaldo] left, Marco moved over to guitar, and we added Thomas [Laratta] on guitar and Andrea [Core] on bass. Then Andrea left during the pandemic. I’d say that since “Cycles” we found a good balance of like-minded people with different tastes and approaches. We support each other’s creativity but also smooth out each other’s excesses. After all, we feel that our identity as STP is rooted precisely in this balance of different tastes and ideas. If we don’t put our individual quests to expand our horizons in service of the “collective writing process” of STP, we risk Marco getting away with a fifteen minute power metal song in “Elvish” about some obscure Japanese anime character or something like that, hahaha!
Do you mean to say limits are as important as open-mindedness? Do overindulgence and pretentiousness connect? Where should the line be drawn?
It’s much like any form of communication: in any act of speech your purpose is to express your feelings and ideas, but you have to express them in a way that is understandable to your intended listener and that causes within them the desired outcome. You can’t just talk ignoring the agreed-upon meaning of words or the common-knowledge rules of grammar, nor can you insult everybody around you in order to feel “true to yourself”, otherwise what’s the point?, you’d just be talking to yourself.
It takes effort and ingenuity to express as much of yourself as you can within those limits, while at the same time pushing them as far as they can go without driving your listener away, and it’s in that ingenuity that lie creativity and originality. And as you keep pushing, at one point you realize that the limits are now way further than they were before, and the listeners find themselves suddenly included in this new expansion. This might just be my (Marco’s) personal opinion, but I think there’s a reason why the most beloved works of poetry of all time are all in some fixed form (sonnet, iambic pentameter, hendecasyllabic tercets and so on).
That said, of course those limits need to be flexible and never too tight and, most importantly, highly contextual. For example, in our case, it’s not like one of us can come into the rehearsal room with a song written that the other three don’t like at all and expect them to just suck it up and play it anyway; that’s the first limit, the mediation between our four individual tastes. Also, our audience comes from a certain area, so it’s not like we can come out with, say, an entire enka or synthwave album and expect it to be liked by the same people that mosh to “Shaping The Existence”; in other words, the second limit is that you must surprise your listener and expand their horizons as you communicate what you want to communicate, but you must never insult them or make them feel rejected. Again, like in any act of communication.
One final risk that we take into consideration comes from our own experience: there’s a point beyond which a song that we put too much different stuff into, and that we’ve been working on for too long, becomes a jumbled incomprehensible mess. It’s all about keeping a general idea or concept in mind as a guideline, and removing what strays too far from it.
How much do you want to express yourselves in a way that your listeners can easily relate to?
Well, I’d say that our songwriting process ensures that we don’t go too far all at once. We have certain elements that make up our “core” sound, so we use that as the starting point, and we incorporate further ideas into it. By keeping a firm baseline and going step-by-step from there, our audience is brought along on our journey. Another thing we do is that we try to avoid being too obscure with our lyrics: it’s good to have an element of mystery and it’s good to leave some room for personal interpretation, but there’s a risk in going too far in that direction, because you don’t want your listener to think “I have no idea what the hell they’re on about”, so we try to strike a balance between not being incomprehensible and not being too obvious. Whether we’ve been doing well on that front or not, of course, is not for ourselves to judge.
When it comes to genre and lyrical matter, how much experimentation are you willing to take with your music and lyrics?
We’re up to pretty much anything, as long that it’s something we all agree on and like. Maybe there’ll come a day when we’ll want to revert back to something straightforward and simple, maybe we’ll expand even further to include even more guest vocalists, orchestrations and rap parts like we did for “Closing Cycles”, who knows? As of now, we’re working on a series of three songs that tell an original fantasy story in Italian, and also on a couple more that are inspired by other works of narrative (videogames, books etc.), plus plenty more ideas that may or may not ever see the light of day. It’s a bit too early to talk about the musical side of it because it’s only in the pre-production phase that we can really understand if something works as we’ve imagined it or not, but I’ll tell you a few random hints concerning the kind of stuff we’ve been taking inspiration from: Savatage, Japanese chord progressions, baroque, Fernando Sor studies, and prog.
Would you like to be known more for your lyrics' positive qualities? What impact would you like the band to have?
We’ve never been particularly worried about the impact of our lyrics, but I’d say we’d simply like them to be acknowledged for what they are, both in their “dark side” and “light side”; if nothing else, because the reality of the world and of the human experience is in the dialectic interrelation of all those sides. Our main ambition is simply to express ourselves through what we do, if this leads to a result that is as musically fun and thought-provoking to the listener as it was to us, then we’ll know we’ll have reached one of our goals. Also, not being necessarily interested in carrying social or political themes as a band, this allows us to simply be ourselves.
-Dave Wolff
