I have a feeling that Raintime are going to be absolutely floored when they see the ProgPower crowd.
I know they will. The biggest crowd they've ever played for was probably no more than a couple of hundred people. There are a lot of bands in this area; SlowMotion Apocalypse, Revoltons, Raintime, Elvenking, etc., and we're all really good friends and we all support each other at our concerts, no matter how small or big the venue. In fact, all those bands I just mentioned live within a 20 km radius of each other, and we all support each other. Claudio and Raintime came to almost all of my old band's shows, and we were just a crappy death metal bar band. Fortunately, I've moved on to bigger endeavors since then, but there is no hiearchy here...everyone's equal. A few months ago I saw Raintime supporting another band and there were no more than 50 people for the entire show. We play where we can, when we can, and 90% of the time we're playing for free. They feed us and let us drink all night, so we don't worry about money because we're all great friends and it's just one big happy metal gathering.
Claudio is one of the nicest guys I've ever met and very humble and grounded. He started off playing keyboards and singing at the same time, but then he recruited Andrea from Revoltons to play keyboards for him. Claudio lives in Maniago, a small town of about 5-10,000 people, and I live in a town even smaller than that about 10 km away. There are no big cities around here, unless you count Venice which is an hour and a half away, Udine, which is an hour away, or Trieste, which is 2 and a half hours away...Rhapsody is from Trieste. But there is a gigantic metal scene here, and it's always been here. Claudio was telling me one time that he feels that this region doesn't have enough metal culture, and I almost passed out! That was one of the reasons that I wanted to stay in Italy was because of the culture of heavy music here. I told him that where I'm from in the US, and where most Americans are from, heavy metal is a joke to people. There are no local metal scenes, and if there are, it's no more than a handful of bands. In the US, we didn't have a huge name metal band concert every month, sometimes twice a month like we do here in Italy. We would've given our right arm to be able to see half the bands that I see now in Italy. In the past three years, I've seen well over 200 metal concerts...Wacken type of bands. In the US, we had Ozzfest, which is a joke and ProgPower, which is once a year. Americans are chomping at the bit to get a piece of the action going on over here. When I told him all of this, he couldn't believe it...everyone has this misconception that everyone in the US is a metalhead because the biggest names came from there. I told Claudio that it's perfect right where we are, and that one day he will see just how hungry people in the US are. I think now he will finally see what I'm talking about.
If you want to hear one of their new songs, go to their website at Raintime.com and it automatically plays in the player. It's called Flies and Lies, and it's awesome. The clean vocals are so much more powerful on this album...just as powerful as the growls. Claudio told me that he had to layer each clean vocal track three times to get that sound....not an easy task. Also, I believe the singer for Blind Guardian sings in a choir chorus part on a couple of songs. Actually, I know he does because you can hear his voice and because Claudio told me. Also, the singer for Hatesphere sings on the second track of the album...brutal. You are all in for a real treat.
