Sergio, Danilo, Dino

T.I.R.

There have been tons of comeback stories of bands that did rather little in their earlier years only to make a full scale comeback after there are older and wiser. This is the story of the Italian T.I.R. –TOTAL INFERNO ROCK. Steinmetal had a chance to talk to the three remaining veterans of the band to hear about the new album, their perception of Metal today and of course if it is really fun doing it in Italian.

By Lior Stein

• March 7, 2012

Greetings guys, it is an honor to have you for an interview on Metal Temple magazine. How is the feeling to be officially back?

Thanks for your invitation, it's a honour for us. We come from the past and we are proud to present our old school Heavy Metal for today's Metal kids.

When I first heard the name of T.I.R., or TOTAL INFERNO ROCK, I was right away interested. Who came up with the name? Is there a history behind it?

SERGIO: Since the very beginning the name TIR has been a tribute to big and mighty Camion, also known as TIR. Then to give a more "Heavy Metal" meaning we moved it as Total Infernal Rock adding dots between the letters. With this name at the time we were pretty appreciated and known in the Roman underground scene. We like the moniker really much as it represents out musical power.

For a band of more than twenty years of existence, at least when looking at your discography, you didn't release anything official aside from 1984's EP and your debut "Heavy Metal". Was this situation due to mistakes you made in your career or something else?

DANILO: The band got a really good live activity since the beginning; our first official recording is in 1985 when we recorded the track "Amsterdam" (now known as "Nell' Anima" from Heavy Metal album) for the "Metallo Italiano" compilation, with other great Italian bands as VANEXA, RAFF, CROSSBONES. Also a promotional video clip was recorded for this issue!

If you can please tell the Metal Temple readers, what were the reasons behind your first break up in 1986 and what was behind your re-emergence three years afterwards?

DANILO: Even if the promotion was really big for the time, the "Metallo Italiano" album did not give us the results we dreamt of and some musicians left the band. Only guitarist Sergio never gave up and in 90s new musicians entered the band but for some live gigs "old" musicians came back to play occasionally. The main change was to use no more English lyrics, but only Italian ones.

Aside from welcoming new members, what went on with you guys in the 90s and the first decade of 00s up until the release of "Heavy Metal"?

SERGIO: in 90's we played a lot of live gigs but the choice to use Italian lyrics was considered hazardous and then no much interest from labels. We stopped for some years, then I met the "old" guitarist member Danilo and the bass player Dino and this gave new blood and enthusiasm to the band. Dino is friend of the Roman band ROSAE CRUCIS and so asked to Ciape (Vocals) and Piero (Drums) to join the band. ROSAE CRUCIS already were under the Jolly Roger Records label and so we get in touch with the boss Antonio Keller who liked very much our promo CD ("Roma", "Nell 'Anima" and "Vai", all tracks then will be registered for the Heavy Metal Album) and made us play in Jolly Roger Festival near Bologna in 2009 and also gave us the chance to record our long waited debut album.

"Heavy Metal" sounded to me like yet another great reminder of the golden years of traditional Metal. Do you think that this album successfully integrated with nowadays' scenery?

The Heavy Metal album is simply about the soul, the spirit, the style and the heart of the classic Heavy Metal sound of the 80's. There's a lot of HM "tradition" in the album, but this happened in a really natural way, as most of the tracks we played and arranged since 1980! That's why we also decided to call the album "Heavy Metal" this is our tribute to this genre that influenced our life's so much as musicians but also as men. We kept the spirit of these tracks alive and we're happy to see this album is appreciated also from younger kids, it's like a flame we hope will never fade.

What do you think is so special in the album in comparison to other 80s oriented albums?

Some can say this album is "old" and similar to classics of HM, but what can we do? We created and played these songs when SAXON, IRON MAIDEN, NWOBHM, JUDAS PRIEST were the only music and Heavy Metal we knew, so it's normal to play this way. The most important thing is that these tracks are still fresh and passionate!

Since many non-English bands have been producing their material in English, why did you do the same, especially when most of the choruses on the album are semi-English?

We strongly believe that the Italian language suits very well in Heavy Metal music. You know, many Pop Italian stars are famous all over the world singing in Italian....most of the operas are in Italian too, so what's the problem? Italian is at the same time melodic and aggressive as our music. Then, we think it's better to sing correctly in our own native tongue, than to write ridiculous lyrics full of errors (both on typing and singing) in a language we don't know perfectly, don't you think? Then Ciape's way of singing is strongly more deep and passionate, because he believes in every word he is singing. Also we are proud of our choice, this allow us to be a little different from other bands and we see a lot of good ranking reviews also outside Italy, so we also think times are good and mature to "export" HM music with Italian lyrics. Some choirs are in English just because they came this way naturally 🙂

Were there any messages, apart from the love of the music that you wanted to deliver through the songs on the album?

Lyrics are mainly about the will to carry on, despite of troubles or bad times, to believe in ourselves always! "Il volo delle aquile" is a sincere tribute to all friends/musicians we met through these years, also the ones are no longer with us now...

I noticed that you had more than a few songs from your past left out of the album, will those be re-recorded and included on next releases?

Maybe...we have a lot of still unreleased material since '80s, let's see!

What is coming next for you guys?

We are really happy about Heavy Metal Album and we are now focusing on playing live ; unfortunately only live gigs in Italy, but we hope to play also outside Italy soon...maybe also in Greece 🙂 As told before, we have a lot of unreleased stuff ready and we wish to record a new album soon!

Dear folks, I would like to thank you for taking this interview for Metal Temple. May the "Heavy Metal" album won't be your final word. I wish you the best of luck!

Thanks for your words and for your support! as an underground metal band we need this and we strongly appreciate!!! We suggest Greece kids to listen to our album and if you like classic old school Heavy Metal you won't be disappointed!!

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