UNDER THE BED – Interview with the band

Under the Bed is not your average rock band. This Italian group is known for their bizarre yet wise combination of Math Rock and Pop, while ensuring that none of their fans will be left unsatisfied. Their latest album “Controlled Filth” was released this year, which perfectly encompasses their definitive style. Under the Bed were kind enough to answer a few questions from us. They go through their DIY approach to music as well as share how Corona has affected their run as independent musicians.

You just released your new album “Controlled Filth”. Apparently, it took 4 years from your second record, “Two is a lie”. Are you happy with the outcome or do you feel as if you could’ve done a lot more in these 4 years?

Yeah, it’s been a long time, but we actually feel like we did quite a lot in the past few years. After “Two is a Lie” was released, we played gigs in Italy for almost two years, then in the summer of 2018 we decided to start composing new music. We chose to write an EP because we wanted to avoid what happened for our previous record (we had a lot of issues and lineup changes, so it took like two years to write it): so, less songs to focus on, faster pre-production, and definitely more fun composing! We basically wrote one track per month, and by the beginning of 2019 we were entering in the studio. We all have jobs (plus our singer got married in the summer) so we couldn’t have a continuous recording process, but we took advantage of that ’cause we wanted to take our time tweaking and perfecting each song, and we couldn’t be happier with the result! We had the final master at the end of summer, and by fall we already released the first two singles with music videos, so yeah: it was a long journey, but we felt like we never stopped, especially ’cause this was the first time we were writing music together in the rehearsal room, trying stuff, jamming, improvising, and having fun.

Personally, I consider your music to be genre-bending and very unique: “Catchy and heavy math pop”. How did you come up with this combination?

We all listen to both pop and heavy music: growing up in the 90s/00s probably helped, ’cause back then if you watched Mtv for a couple hours you could find basically anything, from Blink-182 to Aphex Twin, from Deftones to the Backstreet Boys. We love composing odd riffs and rhythms, but during the years we realized a catchy chorus it’s actually the hardest thing to write, and it’s like a song’s ID, so it feels good when it works properly: making it fit into a complex or heavy song always felt like the ultimate challenge for us.

Under the bed has definitely matured as a band over the past 7 years. Starting from your debut record, “The Noble Art of Denying Reality”, to your latest, What all has changed over these years?

Well, in our debut album we were definitely trying too hard to make song structures weird and unpredictable, which is a cool thing, but year after year we realized that, while people seemed to enjoy our early songs for their unpredictable and definitely not-easy-listening characteristics, there was a fine line between being unpredictable and being selfish: the risk of making complex music for the sake of it is something we wanted to avoid. At first we felt like the addition of catchy refrains was enough to keep people hooked, but then it was clear that making song structures more accessible wasn’t a sin, and that it didn’t necessarily mean losing originality or clever songwriting and arranging. That’s why in all these years we kept trying to pack things down and focus on composing actual songs, instead of 7-minutes rollercoaster rides with nine hooks and dozens of different genres combined: we absolutely didn’t want to step onstage and play just for ourselves. We had too much fun seeing people dance and sing at our shows to do otherwise!

Considering the current situation in Italy, since y’all are quarantined for good, can the fans expect a new album this year, a product of isolation? Maybe something crazier than the average Under the bed?

Right now we’ll invest energy and time promoting this album: it’s a weird situation for artists everywhere, but we can’t afford giving up and leaving this record aside to rot. Plus, people definitely need music these days, so we hope we can cheer and psych them up for the upcoming shows: when this will be all over (hopefully soon), we’re sure concerts everywhere will be thrice as wild and fun! As for making new music, we all live in different cities and we can’t physically meet up to play: we’re spending time rehearsing songs by ourselves, so we’ll be prepared to give a heck of a show as soon as we step onstage! But hey, we all have Skype and DAWs, so if some crazy ideas pop up, we’ll be ready for some long-distance songwriting!

It seems as if you guys like doing things yourself. From producing, engineering, mastering to the album art itself, do you find the “DIY” culture to be one among the reasons for your success?

Well, we’re still a relatively unknown band, but I’m sure the DIY approach gave us a lot of freedom and leeway, not only in the production process: our lead guitarist Michele Bertocchini recorded all our albums, so this helped us a lot shaping our music the way we wanted. Also, our singer and bass player are videomakers (so we shoot our own music videos), our drummer helps us contacting venues for gigs… we’ve become a sort-of well oiled machine, which is perfect ’cause unfortunately this is not our main job, so we had to adapt to keep ourselves on our feet during all this years! As for “Controlled Filth”, we actually had a lot of help from different sides: drums were recorded in Gianni Bini’s House Of Glass Studio, the rest was all produced and recorded in Giacomo Luporini’s La Tana del Lupo, and we had the best mastering done by Davide Prew and Pamela del Sorbo (Studio MEDA Sound).

How has technology affected Under the bed’s career? Over the past 7 years, things have changed a lot when it comes to the music industry. How have you kept up with these technological advancements?

Yeah, they have indeed: we started with MySpace, then moved on to Facebook and YouTube, and now there’re all these streaming services and platforms available for everyone to use. It’s surely a more technologically advanced environment, but somehow we feel like when things were less simple and accessible, people were more eager to discover new artists. Having all the music in the world in a single app probably made us all more lazy, in a way: or perhaps we’re just getting older. Truth is, one needs to always stay curious when it comes to art: there’s nothing worse than having a stale mind and taste.

Is music subjective or objective? Do you see genre classification as a major problem?

It sure is useful to label things and make it easier for everyone to orient themselves, but as times goes by genres and styles blend together and often overlap, so it’s become more difficult to pinpoint an exact genre for a song or band. This is kinda cool, ’cause sticking to a single one bears the risk of limiting oneself while creating, but more importantly, the worst thing genre classification can do is create factions and divide people, while music should unite. That’s why, even with a different approach in songwriting, our main goal is always to create hybrid stuff and break down barriers between genres.

Has the Italian culture played a major role in your style?

Not particularly: we all listen to Italian bands, but even our favorite local ones have a more “international” sound, so to speak. This doesn’t mean we completely disdain our roots: we mainly write lyrics in english, but there’s a couple songs with verses in our mother tongue. It was a fun addition to our catalogue: it’s weird but we’re not quite used to write songs in Italian. We love the musicality of the language, but we feel like English somewhat flows better for our music.

Are you all self-taught musicians or have you pursued any formal training?

A little bit of both: our screamer is a self-taught synth player, our lead guitarist and drummer received training, our singer is a self-taught guitar player but he actually studied solfège and harmony (same thing with our bassist, who started learning by himself then took lessons in a music academy). One thing we learned is, music theory is a really important addition to your skillset, but you must never be afraid to forget it and follow your heart while composing, otherwise you’ll find yourself trying to shove every single thing you learned in a single song, and results are rarely good.

It is clear that Corona had a huge impact on the music industry, especially for those bands who had to cancel their tours and refund all the tickets. Moreover, some bands had even travelled to a different country, only to find out that their show’s been cancelled. How has Corona affected you?

When the lockdown happened, we were about to announce our first tour dates, so we had to cancel those and we never had the release party we wanted for our record. Lucklily enough we already had physical copies delivered to us, and even if it may took a while to ship them we can manage orders online and get this EP the promotion it deserves. Not being able to play our songs live is rough, but our top priority must be the safety of everyone, us included. Let’s just say the Corona outbreak had a worse impact on bigger bands who had a lot more invested in their tours and marketing campaign. The saddest thing that happened to us is the fact we weren’t able to finish shooting our music video for Rabid: we are really proud of how it turned out, it’s like a short movie, so we hope things will work out as soon as possible so we can show it to you. For now, it’s imperative people everywhere follow lockdown rules so we can all kick Corona’s ass together and finally go back singing, dancing and having fun, side by side. In the meantime, you can blast our new record as loud as you can: perhaps it’ll help!