Italian Power: An Interview With Kalidia

Zur deutschen Version dieses Artikels geht es hier.

When you think of Italy, you immediately think of Tuscany, Rome or the wonderful food. The fact that Italy has some amazing music to offer often falls short in that thought process. One example for the exceptional Italian taste in music ist the band KALIDIA! While the band worked on their album in the Emperial Sound Studios, singer Nicoletta Rosellini took the time to answer some questions.

Thanks once again to lightinmirror.de for the wonderful photos!

Shieldmaiden’s Voice: If you had to describe KALIDIA in three words, which would you choose?

Nicoletta Rosellini: Melodic, power… and funny, I guess.

SV: What distinguishes KALIDIA from other bands?

Nicoletta: I thinks it’s the three words I just gave you, because we have strong melodies, but play typical Power Metal and our shows are always fun. We engage with the people, we’re bringing the crowd on the stage with us and that is something that people really appreciate. We’re not building any walls between us and the audience and I think that the people really enjoy that.

SV: Are there bands, albums or songs that influenced your style?

Nicoletta: We were basically raised with the classic power metal bands like STRATOVARIUS, RHAPSODY, ANGRA, and HAMMERFALL. We started out by playing cover songs of these bands which is why they heavily influenced our style. Federico, our guitar player and main composer, is really into prog metal and likes bands like DREAM THEATER. One of the songs we recorded so far has a very prog-like feel to it. No matter how many influences we do have, we always try to focus on the melodic and power metal aspect of the music.

SV: What kind of themes and topics do you like to incorporate into your songs?

Nicoletta: That is also a thing that sets us apart from other bands! In female-fronted metal, there are many cliches to have very personal songs that talk about feelings and whatnot, but that is not our main goal in music. We basically talk about what we love. there can be songs about video games, like Frozen Throne, or Greek myths, like Orpheus or Circe’s Spell, and also TV shows, books, everything that we really like, inspires us! Some of the songs are already born with a main theme where you know that the song will be about pirates or a Greek myth, for example. And in other cases we just write the music and decide later what it will be about.

SV: Is there someone in the band who gets to decide which movie or book the songs will then be about or is it a group effort?

Nicoletta: It depends. Sometimes you will have an inspiration which you will focus on in writing and other times the music is already there and I write lyrics that I like and I also get input from the other members. We always talk about the topics as a band to make sure everyone is on board with what I’m writing.

SV: Can you tell us more about your current work in the studio?

Nicoletta: Yes! We’re recording our third album, finally! It’s been three years since the release of our second album, so it was about time. When this whole pandemic situation developed, we didn’t really know what to do because we had a lot of shows planned and we’re were more focussed on playing these shows than working on the new album. Then everything changed and it wasn’t for good. We had to change all of our plans. Arranging recording session was hard, because we are in Italy and Lars is here in Germany. The album itself was done a year ago, but we couldn’t start recording until July. Anyway, we’re now seeing the light, so we’re here to record the vocals for the new album.

SV: What is innovative about this album for KALIDIA?

Nicoletta: Recording an album after releasing Frozen Throne, which is, in my humble opinion, a perfect album, it’s really difficult to think about what to do better because it really was perfect to me. It was a big challenge for us. We tried out many things and it will be quite an evolution after the last album. There will still be the melodic parts, the powerful vocals and there will also be something new which I hope people will enjoy as much as we do.

SV: How would you describe your role in KALIDIA? Are you the person pushing the rest of the band or are you going along with their suggestions?

Nicoletta: This is an interesting question because we consider ourselves as a band which is not the always the case for female-fronted bands. Usually they rotate in the orbit of the singer and we don’t want that. You will never see a selfie of me on KALIDIA’s official channels, that’s not something that’s gonna happen. We are a band and we are focussing on being a band. I’m the one who takes care of social media because I’m more practical with it since I do a lot of it for my personal channels and not because I’m the „leader“ of the band. In addition, the guys do the main part of the songwriting and we consider us all to be on the same level. No frontwoman, no backing band, just one band. For us, it’s important to have this kind of approach. Whenever we play concerts or festivals, we always try to evenly split the work and so far it has worked quite well.

SV: What is the most enjoyable thing about being a singer in a metal band?

Nicoletta: I think, it’s the emotions you get from the audience during the live shows. This is not that common in other music genres, especially not when you’re not that big a band. We were able to grow this really strong fanbase that come to every show and that will participate as much as they can. This is something I absolutely love! Being in touch with the audience and the fans is honestly one of the best feelings on earth!

SV: What is the best experience you’ve had so far with KALIDIA?

Nicoletta: Working with Lars Rettkowitz (Emperial Sound) changed our view on the band significantly and helped us grow a lot. The process of working with a really good producer is something we really cherished. I also tried to think about some special festival or shows we played, but in reality we greatly enjoy every opportunity to play live and so it is difficult to pick just one. Maybe one of the first concerts we ever played, back in 2015, which was with RHAPSODY. We were the only support band at this gig and it was a dream come true because we admire them so much. It was hard to comprehend that that was really happening and after the gig we were ecstatic!

SV: I can imagine that! Looking into the future, what are goals you would like to achieve with the band?

Nicoletta: We were supposed to go on tour with MAJESTICA last December which was also supposed to be our first tour since we only did single gigs, both in and outside of Italy, before that. We don’t know how the situation will evolve but doing the tour would be an amazing thing to do. Just going on tour in general is the big goal we aim to achieve since we have reached good numbers with our album, both in sellings and in views/streams, with which we are really satisfied. Nevertheless, we want to do more and going on tour will hopefully push us further.

In addition, we hope to release a good album that people will enjoy!

SV: What is the best way to support you in this?

Nicoletta: We have a really cool merch store in which we are selling all the goodies we have, like limited editions, vinyls, hardbooks and awesome shirts. This is a good way to support us going on tour because these things cost a lot of money. Streaming our songs and listening to our music on Youtube also counts! Even just spreading the word about how good we are, is a great help! Right now, we can’t really play live gigs and talking about us and listening to our music or watching our videos is a great help in this situation. 

SV: Is there something you want to add to this interview that we haven’t talked about yet?

Nicoletta: For the new album, we are recording more songs compared to the previous album because we want to have more bonus tracks which will be found on various editions. We will also have a cover of a popular song by a famous band which I won’t reveal just yet but the band is from Sweden. It’s gonna be a lot of fun! The album will feature some catchy melodic songs in typical KALIDIA style, but there will also be a prog metal song and it’s gonna be awesome!

KALIDIA will return to the stages soon! In order not to miss that, you can have a look at their website and while you’re at it, you can pick up the occasional goodie from their merch store!