Exclusive short interview with Luca Turilli

Saturday, 08 May 2010 10:35

Q: Hi Luca, which have been the reactions to the album “The Frozen Tears Of Angels” so far?

LT: I can just use one word: amazing!!!
With the exception of the first debut album “Legendary Tales” I sincerely don’t remember an album of Rhapsody that was welcomed and hyped in the same way from the people and from the international press too.
I want to say THANK YOU in the name of Rhapsody Of Fire to all the fans and to all the journalists that supported us in all these years and especially now!

Q: For the first time a song, the single “Sea Of Fate”, was composed by you, Alex Staropoli and Fabio Lione. How did it happen?

LT: I can tell you a little story about this event. I and Fabio were in a German airport when he started to sing a melody that he would have probably used for one of his songs of the future solo album. After having listened to it a couple of times I told him that such melody could have fit perfectly in one song of our new album. Later I and Alex composed the rest of “Sea Of Fate” but I am proud to say that Fabio’s great contribution was nothing less than the chorus of such song! And then of course, also for this reason, we decided to use it as opener of the new album… the perfect way to present ourselves after so many years telling that we are still alive, united and stronger than ever!
What I want to add is also that Fabio composed not only that part for this album, but also the final section of “Lost In Cold Dreams” (the one starting after my guitar solo) and the verse of the title-track “The Frozen Tears Of Angels” together with Alex and me.
To say the truth is not the first time Fabio composed something for Rhapsody in all these years. Apart from the song “Il Canto Del Vento”, completely written by him and released on the album “Triumph Or Agony”, there are some verses of some older songs that were mainly based on vocal improvisation and so, even if not credited, I remember he really helped me and Alex while composing the vocal melody of verses for songs like “Erian’s Mystical Rhymes” or “Gargoyles, Angels Of Darkness”.

Q: Please tell me something about the lyrics of this album and the 3rd chapter of “The Dark Secret Saga”

LT: “The Frozen Tears Of Angels” represents the 3rd chapter of “The Dark Secret Saga”, an epic tale that started with the album “Symphony Of Enchanted Lands II - The Dark Secret”. It is connected with the first “Emerald Sword Saga” because located in the same “Known World” and because starting some years after the last events told in the first saga.
In this chapter I tell about a new epic adventure, a dangerous and emotional journey for the five main characters moving from their lands to the unexplored and icy northlands, there where the Erian’s legendary book could be hidden. If found, those holy pages written with the blood of the angles in the primordial times, could reveal something more about the dark secret related to an ancient prophecy now threatening the whole known world.

Q: It’s known that the saga of Rhapsody is more than just an epic tale. Can you tell us more about?

LT: Thank you for the question. Surely the Rhapsody sagas offer different levels of reading. It’s funny to remember how in the recent past, despite my interviews and my continuous explanations during the years, there were still some people out there thinking that the Rhapsody sagas are just fantasy tales without any “depth”.
Those ones that think this or define our music as “cheesy” are just superficial people giving superficial judgments and sincerely their arrogant prejudice doesn’t deserve any comment.
Sometimes it happened also that someone asked us about role playing games or about “fantasy” oriented videogames in relation to our artistic influences. Personally I never played a so-called role playing game in my whole life and whenever I find the time to play a videogame, then I always prefer fast racing games.
Instead the most informed people know well that the passion for these “themes” comes exclusively from the cinema as I and Alex always enjoyed, between the thousands movies of all styles we love, the vision of great heroic-epic masterworks like “Conan The Barbarian”, “Braveheart”, more recently “The Lord Of The Rings” and many more. But of course this can explain the less intimate aspect of the saga only. Behind it there’s a whole world based on a strong passion for the psychology, philosophy, anthropology, mind dynamics, sacred geometry, mysteries of the religion, texts related to the spiritual evolution of the human being and all what refers to our relationship with the cosmos (space and time, relativity, quantum of light), etc.
Each Rhapsody lyric contains a little bit of all this and there is not a single association of words inside our songs that has not a deep meaning related to the spiritual sphere or to symbolism.
In general you can observe that in each chapter of the Rhapsody sagas there is a “quest”, a “search” for something… and a long journey, full of obstacles, that is always necessary to reach a distant and apparently unreachable goal… this is clearly the metaphor of life and the exploration of the inner feelings of the human being while crossing the path from birth to death, trying to answer the timeless questions related to its existence: from where we come? where do we go?
And then the mystery of soul, the parallel dimensions, the energetic equilibrium, the concept of good and evil in relation to moral, spirit and genetic… all those questions and arguments that from age to age fascinate the scientists, the philosophers, the intellectuals, but also many artists trying to express their passion for life and its related mysteries through their humble art. Nothing less, nothing more.

Q: The Final Words About The Album… (Excerpts From “The Final Words” Section Of The Digipack’s Booklet)

LT: Surely this album is the most modern and “fresh” of all in our discography. It’s one of the albums we are more proud of, a real journey of feelings and moods very different from the rest of our productions, musically and lyrically. We thank our great new record company, Nuclear Blast, to have partnered with us to turn our new artistic dreams into a great metal sounding reality. In general, while composing the albums of Rhapsody, Alex and I live every breath of our music in a surreal way. As you know we love the wonderful world of cinema and when I tell my partner with passion and emphasis what the lyrics are about and how the chapter of the saga should be emotionally divided song by song, then, being used to have a cinematic mental representation of these parallel dimensions, we start to generate visions of infinite depth and pathos. Such shivers are usually the goal we reach and the following composition, paradoxically the easiest part of the process, has the role of capturing them into our music. There is never a lyric written just to be written, every sentence contains our hearts devoted to emotion. Every association of words is a gate to another spiritual dimension that we live in a very personal way and we make ours without compromise. That's why every album is a real gift we create for ourselves, before anyone else. “The Frozen Tears Of Angels” is not an exception and even more than the other albums, listen after listen, we understand that the translation of soul and emotion into the freezing atmospheres this album needed to have, was completely successful and satisfying to us 100% as composers. Ours, again, is a humble art made of passion and based on a strong message of love, peace and respect, something that in our weird society is seen too often and unfortunately as something “out of fashion”, but that is the one and only engine moving our hearts and giving us the strength to compose Rhapsody Of Fire’s music. Always created to the beauty of Mother Nature and dedicated to those of you who are able to open your heart and treat yourself, your brothers, sisters and all the beloved creatures sharing with us the wonderful gift of life, with absolute respect. Our music is and will be always FOR YOU!