PENTESILEA ROAD (Italy) – interview for KICKASS FOREVER via Angels PR Music Promotion #PENTESILEAROAD
Interview conducted & submitted by Marian Nicolaou on behalf of Angels PR Music Promotion

• Welcome Vito! How things are going about your project Pentesilea Road?

Hello guys and thanks for hosting us. Very well, actually: as you know we have recently issued our debut album and it’s the first material we have published officially.

So quite a big step forward.

• Are you satisfied about the first feedback for your new album?

Definitely, the album has received a very warm welcome from the audience and so the response from the critic has been truly excellent! I think it’s quite an achievement for a band moving its first step as an independent production. We are looking forward for the next months to see if the positive trend is going to be confirmed.

• After releasing your first album you show that you are a really promising and unique prog metal artist! Are there any plans for another full album in the future?

Thanks for the nice words. I do believe the next album might be coming relatively soon, although I am not yet in the position of making a clear timeline estimation. Currently I am already starting to put together some new ideas and I do have some new songs pretty much ready. The fact is that PR is a quite complicated project: considering the way the music is conceived and composed, the final version of the upcoming music is going to be the result of a long refinement process. In addition, in PR the music is also the media through which conveying a message: there’s a clear philosophy behind the project and, as you might expect, writing down the lyrics is definitely not a quick task. The whole thing is going to take its time.

• How can you describe your sound?

Having said that I do not particularly like the idea of strict classifications, I like to define the PR sound like a kind of post-progressive: it has clear influences from prog metal and prog rock, although you can hear some post-rock influences in the repetitive pattern of quite over abused triads chords progressions. While composing, I like to merge, mix, blend in order to try to achieve a distinctive overall sound: sometimes sounding unexpected and original, some other times naïve. In addition to that, there is a curiously wide chronological span in the recording timeline: almost the whole album has been recorded in the last 4 months of 2020, but very few parts (some effects, some clean parts) were recorded about 10 years ago. I liked the idea of keeping those parts unchanged, to give some intact “vintage” feeling which I would have found hard to reproduce with my current setup.

I hope the final result achieved the ambitious objective of being original and beautiful at the same time.

• What are your musical idols?

I have been listening metal for over 3 decades and enjoyed hundreds of bands: I think very many of those have left something in terms of influences, whether in a conscious or unconscious manner. However, if I have to name the main ones I’d say Fates Warning, Queensryche, Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Savatage, Russian Circles, Pain of Salvation…

• Tell us a few words and special moments about the recordings of your stuff.

The album first version has been fully recorded at home and it was pretty much ready on July 2020: it was the juice of several demos I had recorded during the previous few years and it was basically all done by myself. Once I gained the collaboration of Mark, it was clear it was the moment to scale up to the next level and issue a real album. In a couple of months the rest of the band was recruited and the album was ready by the end of the year. I can’t deny, the very special moment is when I’ve heard the first version of “Noble Art” with Ray behind the mic: that was truly emotional!

• What is your opinion about the use of internet? Is this helpful about the artists and bands or they are just being lost into a sea of information?

Difficult question and I’d say the answer depend on the point of view. As a compulsive consumer of music, I can’t deny the Internet opened a new world: basically, nowadays everything is at hand, just open YouTube or Spotify. The drawback is that is truly difficult to enjoy an album like it was happening in the past. The huge amount of available music makes it quickly, and sadly, disposable. The age of fast-food, made also a lot of fast-music or call it whatever you like. The problem, from an artist point of view, in opinion, is not to emerge, but to keep the head above water enough to endure…

• Any live plans for the future?

Frankly, is not the best moment for thinking about it, as the whole live industry is on hold. I would definitely like to bring the band on stage though. Let’s wait and see.

• What is your biggest dream about Pentesilea Road?

Well, walking the stage again, with the same lineup of the first album, that would be a great achievement!

• How did you get started with music? Any special musical studies?

All the members of the band are real professionals who live and work with music: they are truly amazing musicians and I feel extremely lucky of having had the opportunity of playing with them. Curiously, I am the only one within the band without a formal education in music, but I’ve always been truly passionate about it.

• What do you think about the Italian rock and metal scene? Are there any new bands that you love?

Talking about the Italian scene, I do like and respect a lot some bands from the glorious progressive past: PFM, Le Orme, New Trolls, Goblin…Battisti, Battiato that was definitely the golden age. On the more modern time, I do like Rhapsody and Vision Divine: they have been clearly pioneering some new musical style and sound, respectively.

• Congrats and good luck about your work, guys! The last words are yours.

Thanks a lot for dedicating your time and this space to us, truly appreciated. I hope you enjoyed the album at least as much as we did and we’d love to hear your feedback about it!

Band Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pentesilearoad

BandCamp: https://pentesilearoad.bandcamp.com/releases

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKeoz8TsveQC6MOzQPysoKA