When The Sun Comes Down Interview

1.For those that have never heard of you before, can you tell us a little bit about the band?

R: The band is Thomas Hand chaste (that's me!) and Alexsander Scardavian. In 2015 we met  after long time in a musical instrument shop so we decided to make up Where The Sun Comes Down. In the 80's I was the drummer of Death SS and then Paul Chain Violet Theatre. Apart from WTSCD I keep producing and playing in Sancta Sanctorum and THC Witchfield. About Alexsander Scardavian he played with Paul Chain from 1989 to 2012, with Steve Silvester from 1992 to 1996 and he is founder of Strange Here from 2014.
I believe Alexsander is really the only one able to play with Paul Chain and very well indeed with the right feeling. For the realisation of this album  we asked Claud Galley (Death SS, PCVT) to play the bass in two of the tracks and exhumed Santis Goram's voice – R.I.P.- (Death SS, PCVT) in Welcome

2.Recently you have released an album, how would you describe the musical sound that is presented on the recording?

R: Our sound comes from what was created in Death SS/PCVT. It is a kind of English  / American rock with some Italian shades, I'm sure that it'll sound strange to you, but this is my thought of it. Something like what happened with the English progressive music which once appreciated in Italy it gave immediately material to start new bands, but with an “Italian Taste”. The same happened with the project of Paul Chain with the only difference that if Progressive Rock put bands on our Italian musical scene the Rock I'm talking about didn't, apart from Death SS/PCVT. Surely things changed during those years which followed the beginning of our rock bands like for example a few of different musical instruments were added to that sound, but without changing the foundations and the attitude of it. It anticipated what now is called Doom.   

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

R: Lyrics touch topics like the inner world of man (Myself), paranoias and mental personal trips. From Mister Lie, which talks about liers, to social suffering (Voyage) or the memory of the past years (Because we were fools) and a classical idea such as the metaphor of the shipwreck and so the existence. Orazio, Ovidio, Lucrezio and so on till Pascal and Nietzsche, they all dealt with the situation of man swinging on his ship into the storm in the middle of the ocean with no fixed point to rely on.

4.The band members come from some legendary bands that have been around for a long time, what is it that motivates you to keep going after all of these years/

R: Passion for music first of all. To put together a song and all the stuff you can arrange with it's fantastic and personally I spend quite a lot in composing. It becomes your own satisfaction when you see good results from your effort. Certainly we used the stages for the need of expressing ourselves, definitely not for money.

  

5.There was a lot of Occultism in Death SS and Violent Theatre, are you keeping that tradition going with the new band?

R: I have to make things clear: the band Death SS was overtly towards occultism, but this concerned just the founders of the band. So Steve Silvester who announced this particular information and Paul Chain who changed his mind releasing the album Detaching from Satan. As far as I know nobody else was interested about that.
Paul Chain and me shared the idea of life which could be understood from the point of view of death, what Paul used to call “the funeral ladder”. Basically it is the understanding that the consciousness of death can bring. An idea carried on in PCVT too, but without any occultism apart from what is called the Theatre of Life. Personally I am philosophically a materialist and I don't believe in God. I can't see why I should believe in Satan. It would seem stupid to me

6.What is the meaning and inspiration behind the name 'When the Sun Comes Down?

R: the name was Alexsander's idea and I agree with his point of view, again there is in it the image of time passing towards everyone's death. You see we don't sound very happy, do we?

7.What are some of the best shows that the band has played so far and also how would you describe your stage performance?

8.Do you have any touring or show plans for the future?

R: sorry but this band was born with no interest in live gigs. In 2011 I had a serious road accident and since then I can't play live any more, at best I am able to play drums for half an hour, so touring it would be really too stressful for me.

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

R: not long ago the album has been released, not much reviews so far but the ones we know of are very satisfying with good comments in it. We felt that was a good album and now it seems so. We have been struck by sentences like “a voice from sorrow and rage” , “ neurotic neurosis” or “ litanies similar to the British new wave or Joy Division”, “never ordinary arrangements” and “ the childish album cover is something underneath which lies the deepest abyss made of rage and sorrow”. Everything said about it it was already felt and experienced by ourselves... great uh?

10.Where do you see the band heading into musically during the future?

R: we don't know yet. We are recording new stuff but we'll see later what to do with that material.
What I'm saying is that usually we do improvise trying new things and when we have enough work done we combine different parts of different takes and see what comes out. The second step is listening to everything many times attentively before we  compose the real song project which will be recorded properly for the album. Different combinations give different colour to the song which gives different taste and direction to the whole album. So, we'll see what is going to happen.

11.What are some of the band sor musical styles that have had an influence on your music

and also what are you listening to nowadays?

R: Alexsander Scardavian: Cream, Black Sabbat, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix. I listen to old bands not really known by the people and classical music too (Bach, Penderecki, Mozart).
                                 
Thomas Hand Chaste: I come from a family of musicians and loving music people. I listened to every kind of music with much interest. In my discography there are many different things. Not just music anyhow but society give me remarkable material to work on. Lately I'm into classical music.

12.What are some of your non musical interests?

R: A. S. : my interest is about  the inexplicable and I love Jesus Christ.
T.H.C. : after my accident I can't work so I'm resting upon the mountains where I own a little cottage in the bush where trees and plants keep me busy enough. I read a lot.

13.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?
R: who loves the music should change the approach towards it. We'd love a wider view about what has got as Rock. New genres have been created and names we don't actually need. This is a way to split listeners instead of the opposite and so it creates limits. I believe that if we don't change the way we think or instruments to play we still live in the Rock Era. You can call it “Heavy, Country, Electronic, Dark” whatever it is still Rock. I'm pretty sure in a hundred years people will make any difference between Chuck Berry and Nirvana or N.I.N. and The Who. All the same artistic expression called Rock. Better if we take back the music as the whole of it without develop boundaries for the listener.