SADIST – The interview with Tommy Talamanca (guitar & keyboards)

Back in the 90s, I remember some people saying that some Death Metal musicians listen to Jazz. I thought at that time „Oh, It’s interesting. It probably proves that playing Death Metal is quite complicated, because it’s not just a mindless rumbling to playing so fast and technically…”. And then I didn’t think about examples of the musicians. But at some point I started to notice some arrangement differences in Death Metal that made them different from the rest of the bands. And I thought about DEATH, ATHEIST, PESTILENCE and of course SADIST…

You create a very ambitious Death Metal… Or rather, Progressive Death Metal, which contains a lot of Jazz elements. This specific melody of solos, specific bass parts, specific rhythmic divisions. It’s a Jazz with a huge dose of cocaine, hahaha … How did you get interested in such music?

I guess I’ve been always interested in different kind of music. Starting with classical oriented studies, I was more involved in classical and progressive music, and when I started to listen to really heavy staff, at the age of 15, I simply found out that I was interested in pretty much all music, not just one particolar style.

Jazz in Death Metal is no longer surprising, but inclinations with the music of the Middle and Far East in Death Metal are rare. In your case it was not only the use of Arabic scales for arrangement, but also the sounds of sitar, flute or folk percussion instruments. Where did your interest in oriental music come from?

As an italian musician, I consider myself very like ’cause Italy is pretty much the center of the Mediterranean see, and basically, a crossroad between north, south, west and est. I’m more the kind of what we can call a ‘progressive’ musician than a heavy rock guitar player, to me making music is always a matter of searching for new paths.

However, SADIST didn’t stop searching! Your arrangements included elements of classical, orchestral or even electronic music, a lot of horror Ambient… This greatly expands the musical space and deepens the atmosphere…

Let’s say we’ve been trying to set up our own style during our lifetime as a band, which is pretty unique. We are basically a metal band, but we don’t know exactly what it does mean. Making music is still a matter of expressing our own personality, we are still making album just because we feel the need to say something, in our own way.

… In 30 years of your existence you have released a lot of albums, so let’s recall a bit… How do you perceive your previous albums today? I am curious what influenced their arrangements…

Each of our album is the son of a specific moment, and I like the fact that in each of them you can feel it. Each album is different from any other one, because it was influenced by the time when it was written, and since our approach to the music has changed all along the years, it’s not surprise the way we were composing music 30 years ago was different compared to the way we do it now. We are not that kind of band that can simply repeat always the same formula. Don’t get me wrong, there are bands that MUST repeat their formula every time, like AC DC, which is one of my favourite band, and I love the fact that they never changed too much… but Sadist is simply a different story.

I remember my first reaction to your first album “Above The Light” from 1993. The keyboard intro, straight out of a horror movie, made me shudder. After thath rather, I was expecting a music in style of MERYCFUL FATE or a KING DIAMOND. And here came powerful and aggressive Death Metal with ominous vocals, atmospheric keys (often very classic) and strange (in a positive sense) bass parts… And those guitar solos! It wasn’t an ordinary rumble, it was an intelligent chaos, hahaha… A combination of aggression with refinement and musical artistic sensitivity… Then you went further than DEATH, because they didn’t use the keys. Back then, I also knew the music of NOCTURNUS and paid attention to their keys. But I felt a lack of these keys in Death Metal… And SADIST at “Above The Light” perfectly combined Death Metal with keyboards and the influences of classical music…

We probably were the first extreme metal band in Europe using keyboards massively. It’s funny ’cause at the time the average metal fan did not like it too much, and nowdays it’s so normal!! I guess we were just in the middle of something that was going on in rock & metal music during the 90s. But we were not that smart at the time, ’cause when the new orchestral black metal trend was going to get very popular, with bands like Craddle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir, we just changed style!

The 1995’s album “Tribe” probably had a lot of Thrash Metal influence, especially progressive Thrash Metal. And of course Jazz rhythmic divisions (especially bass and drums) as well as oriental melodies, and even declamations. For this heavy and drilling guitars and otherworldly atmospheric solos… Unexpected changes of action. In addition, thanks to a large dose of fairy-tale-psychotic keyboards, it was very avant-garde. I remember that at that time, most Metal fans were not quite convinced of this kind of music… But I was delighted!

Tribe was a big change from Above The Light, and I remember in some country, like Germany for instance, the reaction to the second album at the beginning was pretty cold. But still, the Sadist trade mark was still there: the neoclassical influences, with a touch of new age and jazz, probably. The sound of the band was simply evolving.

The album “Crust” from 1997 was very predatory but at the same time was psychedelic, a bit industrial, with a large dose of horror and cosmic keys. And these various vocalizations, from mad melodeclamations to black screams and death growls…

I still consider Crust our best album, the perfect mix of all our influences, and, finally, a much heavier attitude! It’s not surprise that when we released it, we were finally invited to play at Wacken Open Air, and we were the first italian band, together with Lacuna Coil, to play there.

The Lego album from 2000 was like a leap to the side, a bit influenced by Nu-Metal and Industrial and maybe Dark Electro? Probably there was the least jazz and progressive influences here. However, singing in SADIST was probably not the best part… Then especially Nu Metal was fashionable, and I must admit that I even like this genre…

Every band once in a lifetime has to make a mistake, like the ‘wrong’ album. I think the nu-metal trend, at the end of the 90s, had a very bad influence on many extreme metal bands. But I still think that Lego has at least two or three good songs.

Then another albums appeared, in a stable progressive-death-metal style … In 2007 “Sadist”, the title track of which was instrumental … An instrumental track is rare in Death Metal.

Recording an instrumental track has always been one of our trade mark, it’s something we always did, it started randomly, but after Above The Light, we simply decided to keep on with the tradition. And in 2007 one of our dreams became true, having the Maestro Claudio Simonetti (Goblin) on our album playing our song ‘Sadist’.

In 2010 “Season In Silence” and in 2015 “Hyaena”. You undoubtedly had a recognizable style …

After ‘Sadist’ 2007, we probably started to do less experiments regarding the songwriting. On Season and we decided to focus on the songwriting itself, trying to write more catchy songs but with Hyaena we felt like going back on working on the ‘ethnic’ roots of our sound.

In 2018 you released the last album – “Spellbound”. It was heavier and more powerful than its predecessors. Lower and more monstrous growling, powerful low-tuned guitars and crushing bass… But the tracks are not devoid of Jazz and classical motifs, although clearly less influenced by music from the Asia… The album is very ominous, powerful, sometimes even psychotic…

Spellbound is probably less experimental compared with the previous stuff, and we definitively wanted the go for the most extreme vocals possible. This album is a sort of turning point of our carrier, there are both the catchy songs and the dark atmospheres typical of the Sadist sound, but to me it’s like the end of a path that started in 2007.

Is it true that “Firescorched” that we are all waiting for will sound closer to the previous albums? Basically, each of the previous albums was different, so which one did you mean? Especially since you said: “Firescorched” is probably the most extreme of our albums. He’s fast and experimental. “

I know, sometimes the ads for a new album sound a little predictable, like, ‘the new album is the best we ever recorded…’ But it really is the fastest album ever. For instance, in ‘Firescorched’ you are going to hear blastbeats, and it is the first time for Sadist. For those who already listened to the preview mix of the album, the most common adjective is ‘fresh’….it’s Sadist 2.0 !

The album was created at 2020. So I understand it’s ready?

The album is ready, we are already working on the first video clip, which is also going to be something really ‘new’ for Sadist. We are working with a big video company in order to release something absolutely ‘cinematographic’.

So when will we hear the first single, if you are planning a video for the album “Firescorched”?

We have just finished shooting and around november the director shhould start working on it. We are taking our time, we wish to release something really cool, and this takes time.

“Firescorched” will be released in 2022 by the Polish label Agonia Records. PESTILENCE has recently used its services to release their latest album. Does PESTILENCE have any meaning to you? It’s also a very technical and progressive Death Metal.

‘Spheres’, together with ‘Focus’ from Cynic, was one of those albums that really shocked me, and it’s a shame that those incredible album, at the time they were released, did not have the success they deserved. I’m very happy that Pestilence is alive and kicking, their latest album is wonderfull.

And ATHEIST?

‘Those bands from early 90s, like Death, Cynic, Atheist and Pestilence, were really drawing a new path for the future generations of metal acts. The average metal fan was simply not ready for some of them at the time, but after so many years, everybody realized how much important those bands were for the evolution of extreme rock music.

I remember when I was a young metalhead, I always paid attention to the t-shirts of the band members, what bands they wear t-shirts, which was a sign that they liked these bands. If you were to pose for a photo in metal t-shirts today then which bands T-shirts would you wear?

I should probably wear some t-shirt of any of the bands I’ve been working as a producer, I guess it would be quicker, since I have tons of t-shirts from underground bands.

But let’s go back to the next album… What about will be the lyrics for “Firescorched”? The previous album was inspired by the movies of Alfred Hitchcock.

The new album isn’t a real concept album in the classical meaning of the word, despite the fact that most of the lyrics are somehow connected with a gloomy and anguished feeling which we called with a metaphor: ‘Firescorched’ precisely. Some lyrics are actually real horror stories, and the whole album itself sounds really creepy.

And what will you choose for the cover-art of “Firescorched” this time?

The cover artwork was released by our partner in Nadir Music, Paolo Puppo, and it is just amazing! We all love it, and can’t wait to show it. It’s probably the creepiest artwork we ever had.

The newest line-up of the band is: from always You – the guitarist, the keyboardist and the vocalist Trevor Sadist since the 90s, as well as the new members: the drummer Romain Goulon (ex-NECROPHAGIST, ex-BENIGHTED) and the bassist Jeroen Paul Thesseling (OBSCURA, ex-PESTILENCE). How did new members get to SADIST? Why did you choose them?

Trevor and I had previously collaborated with Romain and Jeroen, they are such talented musicians and wonderful humanbeings, and as soon as we realized that the new material was probably the most extreme and technical we had made, we contacted them because for us they were absolutely the first choice to make the best possible album.

Are You the only songwriter on “Firescorched”?

I wrote all songs, but all lyrics are by Trevor.

How is such music played at concerts? Your music is fast and complicated… Does this complicated music take away the freedom to play?

Not at all, we just play the music that we like to play the way we feel to do it. Of course, we need to practice a lot in order to make the best show possible, but that’s the way it has to be, you need to practice everyday as much as you can, otherwise you simply are not professional enough.

Are there any songs you don’t want to play live or don’t like to play because of their complexity?

We usually prefer to play the most catchy songs live, since we are basicly a rock and roll band, there are songs that simply won’t fit in a rock and roll live show, and it’s not a matter of complexity. If a song is difficult to play, but it’s catchy, we’ll play it live.

We know that the COVID-19 pandemic has a huge impact on the activities of bands, but you are probably already planning something promotional in connection with the release of the album “Firescorched”? Maybe a concert tour?

We are still focused on the album itself, dealing with the label for all different album format we want to publish, but we are also planning some live shows for next summer. We didn’t planned a tour yet, but I guess, as soon as a first single will be released, we will evaluate any offers.

But are you preparing some merch?

I’m glad that Agonia Records is going to take care about it, this way the band can concentrate on the preparatory work of the concerts without any other distractions.

And that was it! Tommy, thanks for the interview! Wish you fulfill your plans for “Firescorched”!

Thank you too, I wish you’ll like the new album.

I have no doubt!

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