Les Fleurs Du Mal had the amazing opportunity to meet with Serenity in London on the 10th of February right before their live show at the Underworld where they co-headlined with Xandria. We met a band sure of their path, alive with the fire of music; their show left nothing behind, they went on the stage and put everything in the performance and the audience response’s was warm and engaged. We wish them all the best for the next stages of the tour and the new release.
Interview by Pamsicle
Photo credits by Pamsicle
LFdM: Welcome to Fabio D’amore from Serenity, thank your for taking the time to chat with us at Les Fleurs du Mal
F: Thank you for the space you gave me.
LFdM: Would you like to introduce Codex Atlanticus for our readers? I am particularly interestedin the name, does it have any reference in literature or folklore?
F: Codex Atlanticus is an opera we wrote based on the character Leonardo da Vinci, based on real facts happened in history and other fiction we wanted to put inside. The real Codex Atlanticus is a diary that is in the museum in Milan (Leonardo Da Vinci’s museum, ndr) and we built up the record as a sort of diary, there is no timeline between the songs but it’s still all about Leonardo; you can find the young Leonardo and old Leonardo. We really built it up like a diary; it’s not a real concept album like in the progressive way, like Dream Theater or Symphony X would do that; also, musically there is no main theme that drives the whole record but I can still think of it as a concept album in terms of themes so the album itself it’s a whole piece but you will find facts that belong to his young era, facts that belong to his old era before dying, talking about church, war, anatomy and everything that he was doing and everything he was working for.
LFdM: I see your line up doesn't present a fixed female vocalist, do you have any plans to replace Clementine?
F: No, actually at the moment we thought of going on like this as a four piece band and going on tour with a guest vocalist, this time we have Tasha and so she will stay as a guest vocalist not a permanent member. There isn't’ another plan to have another fixed member so far.
LFdM: Symphonic and classical music definitely go hand in hand, do you work the classical instruments in the band, do you use guest orchestra members?
F: For sure the next stage would be to have a real orchestra but I don't think at the moment this is really realistic so we had an arranger that built up the orchestra for us, his name is Lucas, it’s the first time we had him on a record with us and the result it’s pretty amazing because we still get some people asking us if this orchestra is real or not so this is pretty satisfying at the moment.
LFdM: I imagine you have started playing the new songs on tour, how's the audience response to them? How do you balance the setlist?
F: In the new setlist half of it it’s the new record it’s really driven by the new material; it’s the first time we do something like this, in the past we would play three, four songs maximum for each new set but this time we wanted to have time to have more new songs.
LFdM: And what’s the audience response to the new material?
F: So far it’s pretty great, for sure not everyone has the new record at the moment so the people are still buying it since it’s been out just ten days. So, even if we haven’t been playing the songs for more than ten days now, it’s been pretty satisfying and pretty amazing feedback.
LFdM: Did you introduce them before the album released?
F: We had a lyric video out December the 9th, Iniquity, which is also in our setlist and we’ve released the first video clip called Follow me on the 15th of Jan and then a few weeks ago we released Spirit in the flesh so these are the songs that anticipated the release date. And we are playing them. And there is one song from the upcoming video that will be revealed later on in March.
LFdM: You have already answered one of my questions on the concept behind the album, but I think it would be nice for our readers to go even more in depth on why you chose Leonardo.
F: I think it is quite complicated, there is not one simple answer on why we picked him as a character. As you may know we already talked about historical figures and characters in our previous records but this time, I think it was 2014 backstage of some big summer festival, we were discussing the new album and suddenly the name of Leonardo was already running on our mouths and I have really no clue on why and how we chose him, we just did.
LFdM: Destiny, I guess.
F: Indeed.
LFdM: And now for a lighter question: what was your experience on tour? Did it in any way put you off touring?
F: For sure I had bad experiences. Especially not here in Europe, but in the US, it’s way more difficult to tour there than in Europe for many factors. But this is not putting me off, at least for now (laughing). I couldn't pick a single experience, it would be too complicated but the whole US tour has been quite difficult for me. The locations, the way they welcome band there is not quite as we do it in Europe. Backstage, shower situations, catering, it’s completely different way of doing thing, I am more for the European style.
LFdM: Are you excited to play the Underworld?
F: We’ve played here several times and it feels like home.
LFdM: How things have changes since you joined Serenity? Music has changed so much in those past ten years, are you feeling the change on your skin?
F: We were releasing the 3rd record when I joined. We do. I mean, I’ve been a fan of real music like I like to call it since I was 3 years old, I always spent my few money on records and now it’s a miracle if someone says I bought a record and this is not the way it should be. We live on that so when I hear about clicks, likes, Spotify and all these things, I don’t really know what to say, actually. This is nothing concrete, it’s all digital. I run a recording studio back in Italy and when I hear these digital things, ti drives me nuts. So yeah for sure, I definitely feel the change on my skin, and I wish I could have lived the great ages in the past but I arrived too late. .
LFdM: Do you think it’s all based on touring now?
F: Yes, unfortunately yes, merch and tour are the only way and if we don’t do we’re out
LFdM: Do you any other non- musical engagements? A full time job?
F: I have the recording studio I mentioned and I also work as a music teacher. So it all revolves around the music for me. Georg is a professor at the university, for example.
LFdM: I LOVE the artwork for Codex Atlanticus, how did that come about?
F: The artist is Hungarian, unfortunately I am unable to pronounce his name or I would butcher it, he did an outstanding job; he picked up all the elements we wanted to include, the old Leonardo, his tools and we tried to re create this in different sides in our videos. In The Spirit in the Flesh you have an older Leonardo for example, doing the anatomy study, we wanted to bring the album concept along with our videos. It was a really great inspiration also for us and we inspired him with our music.
LFdM: Did you work on the videos closely with the director?
F: Yeah. We worked closely with the director on the three videos and we were there every day and there was pretty difficult because it had to be done in four days but it was cool and we gave input and especially the third video will be completely different. I am really satisfied with the result.
LFdM: So, one last questions, a bit silly to be honest, but people need that too sometimes. Your best friends has to convince someone to listen to your music, choose one song of Serenity that would to the job
F: It would be a song from this record because it’s a fresh record and it represents us, it’s a good actual picture of us. Mmm, maybe, maybe, I would suggest the easiest way to be Follow me because it’s the beginning of the record and this is the way we start the gig as well.
