The Beyond Interview

1. Can you give us an update on what is going on with the band these days?

Hello everyone and thanks for this interview! We are The Beyond from Italy and we play death metal. At the moment we are busy in promoting our first EP "Decaying Death" and are working on new songs. At the moment two of them are ready and have been already played live, and another couple is on the works. And obviously we are looking for a label and working hard to find new live gigs.

2.How would you describe the musical sound that is presented on the ep?

"Decaying Death" presents a sound which is a synthesis of both American and European death metal: in it you can find morbid guitar riffs, adrenalinic accelerations with blast beats and slow-downs. The songs pay tribute to bands like Napslm Death, Terrorizer, Morbid Angel, Obituary, Death and Autopsy.

3.What are some of the lyrical topics and subjects the band explores with the new release?

Our drummer Corrado is the lyricist of the band: his lyrics take inspiration from reality and from literature and express great criticism towards society and humanity in general. We can't really predict which topics the new songs will deal with, so far we a new song called "Social Surgery" about Cesare Lombroso and another one entitled "Crawling Worms", which can be taken as a strong disapproval to many aspects of human race.

4.I know that the band was named after an old Italian horror film, what was it that interested you about this movie and made you decide to use it as a band name?

Our monicker is inspired by the Lucio Fulci masterpiece "The Beyond" ("E tu vivrai nel terrore - l'aldilà" in Italian): we are all great fans of this great director, one of the forefathers of splatter and gore and this movie is a mix of gore and supernatural phenomena, with incredibly realistic special effects for that time. What we particularly appreciate about it is the fact that there is no happy ending, there is no space for hope. We thought it would be perfect for a death metal band.

5.What are some of the best shows that the band has played over the years and also how would you describe your stage performance?

Since we started our band activity, we have played a certain amount of shows, both inside and outside our region which is Trentino - Alto Adige, where there are no places left to play live. We would say that one of the best gigs we have had so far was in Naturns together with Blood Edition: we didn't play as good as we wanted, but the aftershow was a great party and we had a lot of fun with the guys! In addition, we recently played in Riva Del Garda at Lochness Pub and despite the location was very small the response was great and we really enjoyed seeing all the people in front moshing and headbanging. We can't really say we go wild while playing, we just concentrate on playing well and let our music instigate the audience.

6.DO you have any touring or show plans for the future?

We don't have any tour planned, but we always are on the lookout for new gigs, especially outside our region and hopefully outside Italy, as we live near the Austrian border. It is quite difficult but we keep on searching and don't get discouraged.

7.Currently you are unsigned, are you looking for a label or have received any interest?

Like every band, our goal is to release a full-length album through a label, so we are looking for one that could produce us and release our material. We have had some proposals, mainly from very small labels, but we are taking our time and, most important, we are looking for a deal that could be worth for us: for us it is important to be supported by promoting the band and hopefully receive a financial help fot the recordings, even if we know it is very hard. We will see, meanwhile we keep on searching..

8.Are there any other musical projects besides this band?

Our drummer Corrado plays in a thrash metal band called Final Fright (https://www.facebook.com/FinalFright?fref=ts), which is releasing a new EP soon. Our bass player Moreno and our guitarist Federico play in Battering Ram (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Battering-Ram/81819442456), a metal cover band. As far as our singer Michel and our other guitarist Michele is concerned, The Beyond is their only band.

9.On a worldwide level how has the feedback been to your music by fans of death metal?

 The response has been great so far! Most reviews have been positive about "Decaying Death" and also the fans appreciated it, both in Italy and the rest of the world. We have done several interviews and during the live gigs people enjoyed the songs and showed us their support by headbanging and moshing! For us it is great to see such emotional involvement, and we all hope that more and more people could know us and like our music.

10.What direction do you see your music heading into on future releases?

The new material we have we might say that is an evolution of the style of our first Ep. We started from those songs and tried to find a more personal sound incorporating into it some more grind influences. We are also working to differentiate a bit more the riffs played by the two guitars. That is the style we are going to follow for the material we are writing for our next release.

11.What are some bands or musical styles that have influenced your newer music and also what are you listening to nowadays?

The influences for our new material are pretty much the same that inspired the writing of our EP: old school death metal in the vein of the bands we mantioned above.
The musical taste of the members of the band is quite different and goes over the boundaries of the metal genere, but the thing that we have in common is that we are all big fans of death, thrash and sludge. Between the bands that we are listening to in those days there are some very cool italian bands like Viscera/// and Psychofagist, with whom we had the pleasure to play some time ago.

12.Outside of music what are some of your interests?

We all have different intrestes, but another thing that we all have in common in addition to music is the passion for exploitation movies, vintage horror movies in particular. The horror movies that you see nowdays are mostly standardised and flat if compared to those that came out in the seventies. Those where really creepy and scarry movies that used to deal with extreme subjects. 
Ah, I was almost forgetting our main passion, the one that we share for beer!

13.Any final words or thoughts before we wrap up this interview?

We would like to thank you for this interview, we hope that your readers will enjoy it as much as we did answering your question! If you are interested in The Beyond you can find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheBeyondDeathMetal?ref=hlour page is constantly updated with news, pics, live and all the stuff you need to know about us! In addition, you can listen to "Decaying Death" for free on our Bandcamp page:http://thebeyonddeathmetal.bandcamp.com/
Cheers!