Interview and photos by Metaloath
The Secret (IT) have just put out their latest album Agnus Dei on Southern Lord Records, and if you have heard it, you’ll know that it is a truly kick-ass album with lightning fast blastbeats alongside slow and eerie monster-riffs. Greg Anderson of Southern Lord signed these guys in early 2010 based on a demo that, according the Anderson, was both relentless and uncompromising. Their first Southern Lord album, Solve et Coagula, was received well by fans and reviewers, and the band has again teamed up with Kurt Ballou for the Agnus Dei album.
They recently toured all corners of Europe together with Converge, and I got the chance to talk to guitarist Micheal Bertoldini after their show in Oslo in early December.
So, first of all, congratulations with the new album Agnus Dei out on Southern Lord Records! It’s truly a kick ass album!
Thank you very much!
How has the response to the album been so far?
So far, we’re very happy. Surprisingly, we got pretty good press and a lot more attention than we actually expected. It’s been cool. Since we signed with Southern Lord, a lot more people started to get interested in our music, and with this album we are starting to see some results from of working hard with this band for the past years. We really aimed to improve from the last album, and I think we got thing right this time.
You’re currently touring with Converge right now. How has that been?
It’s been awesome, seriously! I mean, especially in the early stages of this tour, we played for a lot of people, way more people than we are used to playing for. So, awesome! All the band on this tour, they’re nice people, and the bands are very good at what they do, its really cool to hit the road with bands that are so good.
Converge, Touche Amore, and Storm of Light – they are quite musically different from you guys. How has the fit with the crowds been?
So far, we’ve been very satisfied, I mean, we did not really expect much. We play quite early every night, but the first weeks of the tour, a lot of people came out to see the shows, so we got the chance to play for big and different crowds. That’s been amazing, you know. The response has been good.
The last album, Agnus Dei, definitely has a darker, almost black metal flavour to it with the sustained tones and sinister atmosphere in the lyrics. Were did you wanna go the latest album compared to the previous ones?
I dunno, we haven’t really programmed anything. After the last album, we still had some ideas we wanted to work on. We started writing songs right after we came home from the previous tour. Not that many plans in our mind, we tried just to go with the flow. It was a very inspirational moment. We had a lot of material to work on. When we had 6-7 songs, we didn’t really know exactly how the album should sound like. But then we took a little break, and things just came back on track. It was this natural flow from there on.
What kind of inspiration did you guys look to during the writing of Agnus Dei?
Well, we listen to a lot of music, and perhaps not just music that has to do with our stuff. I think we rediscovered a lot of older heavy metal music that we listened to when we were kids.
What kind of bands?
I listen to a lot of classic heavy metal, like Ronnie James Dio, Iron Maiden, early Metallica, a lot of early black metal stuff, like the Norwegian bands. So, I think this album is more metal and inspired by stuff like that.
About that, the whole Norwegian black metal scene has been both the fortune and curse of metal music in Norway. For a long time there, it was all black metal! There is a vibrant scene of other metal genres, with really great bands like Execration, Discord and Cthon and a bunch of others. The scene is reinventing itself.
Yeah, I really like Okkultokrati! They seem like a very cool band.
Their latest ablum was Snakereigns, or something. Really good stuff.
I checked out the songs online, and it was so good!
Good to see the scene is reinventing itself and going beyond the Norwegian black metal label. But back to your album, there’s a lot of brutal songs on Agnus Dei, especially the first half that’s as vicious as f**k – while the last part of the album of open, slower and heavier, almost a kind sludge/doom-thing going on.
Especially with our kind of music that is overly aggressive and fast, ait can get boring if you pour out 15 songs with blastbeats all over the place. We always want to include some atmosphere in our music. So, after like the five-six first songs, the shock value and the impact of fast stuff is starting to wear off and boring. At least for me, it’s cooler to add some depth and atmosphere, and give the album some flow. When the fast songs come again, they will have more effect. If everything is flat, it gets boring.
I really like the long sustained tones and repetitive riffs, like on the song “Love Your Enemy,” it certainly adds to the overall feeling of the album!
Thanks, man!
In terms of the lyrical content and the album title meaning a “lamb of God” kind of reference, what is the album about?
For some reason, at the beginning of last year I starting to get interested in the concept of sacrifice, especially in the Western culture. After doing some research in books and movies, it seems to me that our culture is really based on the concept of sacrifice. I mean, Catholicism and Christianity is really hung up on Jesus dying on that cross, and sacrificed himself for our sins. And this idea, like or not, have had a huge impact on our culture. We’re born and raised in Italy, and it’s still a catholic country. So, what we’re taught as kids to sacrifice somehow, in every aspect of life, in school, in jobs, for the family, everything. Sacrifice for whatever comes next. This has had a big influence of our lives, so this is interesting to reflect on.
Some reviewers have labelled you as Satanic, any comment on that?
(laughs) You know, personally, I‘m a 100% atheist, so I don’t really believe in God or Satan or any other deity or anything like that. At the same time, I think religion is interesting, because it has a big impact on culture and in our lives. I eman, human beings have created God and Satan and other stuff, and os many people believe in that, so in one sense, its real. Its interesting, because usually, people refer to God as good and Satan as evil. But on the other hand, if you analyse at least the catholic part of that, you kind of also see the idea that man should follow the path made for him, and the dark side represent thinking for oneself. Even if I don’t believe in any of that stuff, that’s interesting. I’m really into thinking about humans as influenced by their creations of like God and Satan.
Yeah, either way, religion is strong patterns of thought, making people do all sorts of crazy shit.
Absolutely, its like something very strong that also reflects the primitive nature of man, like fear of death and fear of an afterlife in heaven or hell, its all connected to the human condition. It’s not about God or whatever, its about human beings creating God. It’s all strong imagery, and it connects well to our music.
So, 2012 for you guys: you’re touring with Converge, Touche Amoure and Storm of Light, and you had great reviews of the latest album. What’s up for next year?
Well, we’re going back on tour in Europe in April/may with Deafheaven, and we’re doing some show in Italy. But after that, we really wanna go back to the US again. We toured the states twice, both small tours, DIY-style. And we recorded our album there this summer, and we took part in the short leg of the Southern Lord Tour with bands like Black Breath, Martyrdod, Burning Love, and Enabler. That was a great experience! The shows had really good turn-outs, so we really wanna do something like that again. The bands were great, and its fun to be on the road with your label-mates.
What are your long-term goals for The Secret? Wanna play stadiums across the world, pilot your own jumbojets from city to city and shit like that? Symphonic orchestra and perhaps a movie as well?
(laughs) Yeah, I hope so! I dunno, we like to play for more people, its cool to play for big crowds, you know.
Well, perhaps if you add some smooth chorus, and remove all that intricate and dark stuff, the dream will come true, you know!
(laughs) I don’t really see pop-elements in our music, but you’ll never know, I guess!
Ok, so we’ll just keep that window open for now. In terms of the music that you listen to, what have been the best new bands for 2012 for you guys?
I know this is not going to sound cool, but honestly, I haven’t been listening to a lot of the new releases this year. For the last 3-4 years, I’ve been discovering older music that I haven’t checked out earlier. But there are definitely good bands out there this year, I actually like the last Chelsea Wolfe album, its very cool, its different from what we do, but it has this deep and beautiful.
Myself, I’ve been listening to the first Genesis albums!
Yeah, they are so good! Its so much great music, I’ve been listening a lot to Italian movie scores, especially from the 1970-ies, there are a lot of good stuff there. The most popular band there is definitely Goblin, and then you have this composer Bruno Nicolai that did a lot of Sergio Martino’s movies. A lot of that stuff is awesome, and I really like cinema as well and movies are inspirational to what we do in this band. We want to get deeper into that kind of 1970-ies Italian music. As of other music, Black Sabbath have always been the main source, you know. They started everything, so its essential to learn from the masters.
You guys are from Trieste, Italy. Do you have any peers and fellow bands you would like to mention?
Yes! Our ex-drummer has this band called Grime, and they’re good. Much slower stuff, more sludged. Very loud and heavy. Intense live shows as well. You should check them out.
So you’re halfway through the tour. What’s left?
We have quite a few shows left. We are going to Stockholm tomorrow, but theirs is a major snow-blizzard going on, so we’ll see if get there in time (laugh). And we’re played Italy at the end of the tour. We haven’t played back home for a long time, so we hope that is going to be good.
So, that’s all of my more or less prepared questions. Thanks for taking the time for this interview. I really enjoyed to show tonight! The sound was good, and the songs came through loud and clear! I hope to see you again soon!
Thanks! Yeah, this venue is good, the sound on stage was good, so I hope it was good in the pit as well.
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