We mix Metal, Rock, Punk, progressive and classical forms – Interview with Violet Blend

Violet Blend are an Italian alternative metal band, featuring extraordinary vocals, rich sonic power, and unbridled energy.

I started my review of Violet Blend’s second album “Demons” with this quote from the band’s biography. The band, which has apparently shrunk to a trio, has meanwhile released the live album “Live And True“. The band was founded by singer Giada Celeste Chelli in 2014, apparently under the name “Violet”. The EP “Venus” (2014) was also released under this name. The name was later changed to Violet Blend. In their tenth year of existence, it’s time to ask the band how this development has gone.

MHF: Hi, I’m Rainer and I write for Metalheads Forever Magazine. Thank you for letting me do this interview with you. How are you?

VB: Hi Rainer, it’s Giada, nice to meet you! Thank you for having me, it’s a pleasure. I’m very well, thanks. How are you?

MHF: I’m doing well too. You are widely known in Italy. But not so much outside your home country. Please introduce yourself briefly.

VB: We are an Italian female-fronted metal band from Florence. We describe our music as a blend of different musical genres, forms and styles. We always try to paint a musical discourse of clear sonic eloquence with the right expressive power to describe and dissect feelings. The sound system, enhanced by the frequent dynamic and rhythmic leaps, leads along a tortuous path of feelings and confessions, under the guidance of the vocal melody which leads the listener towards heterogeneous atmospheres. We mix Metal, Rock, Punk, progressive and classical forms which are part of our background and obviously reflect our tastes. We speak about fragile things, fears, anxieties, broken dreams, aspirations, joys and hopes of our life. We also speak about the importance to stand and react against everything that hurts you. When people listen to our music, I want them to feel understood, to realise they’re not alone, we all have dark moments, but we have to find a way to live well. It’s like an atonement for me to write music, I feel immediately better. Music can heal wounds, that’s what it does with me.

MHF: Your album covers and your stage clothes are in the colour of your band name. How did you come up with this name? Is violet your favourite colour?

VB: The name Violet Blend combines our origins and our passion for exploration. Violet is the color that represents our city, Florence, Italy, our traditions and our background, our safe place, our home. I’ve always had a particularly sensitivity towards colors and shades, that color has the power to relax and calm me down and inspire me. It’s definitely my favorite color. Blend suggests our need to go further and what we like to do with our music by mixing things up. It’s our wish to go over the limits and safe places, the pleasure to discover new things, new sounds and blending concepts, styles, experiences, forms and genres in our music, the desire to be a person with million different faces.

MHF: In the beginning you simply called yourselves “Violet” and later changed your name to “Violet Blend”. Why the name change?

VB: At the beginning there was no real plan or commitment to making music, we were just kids meeting to play together. I met Michel Agostini, the drummer, at the end of 2012, we immediately became friends and started having fun arranging together the songs I had written. We just made up a name that represented the music we made together, but it wasn’t a real band. In 2014 we received an offer from a label to publish the demos we had recorded and so “Venus EP” was released, which was something really very immature. We did it without thinking, without a specific purpose, that demo didn’t represent us and I think we were right to have it withdrawn from the market. At that time I was attending University of Musicology in another city and we played or saw each other very little. We put aside the idea of making music for a few years, until 2017 when I moved back to Florence and bassist Ferruccio Baroni joined the band. Immediately afterwards, our manager Lorenzo Fedi joined us and we started to really believe in it, he gave us the right impetus and courage to throw ourselves into this job. In that year we decided to give it a serious try, we founded Violet Blend, took “Venus EP” off the market, produced the album “White Mask” and started touring. The band was officially born in 2017.

MHF: The press release describes your sound as Alternative Metal. This is a wide term. How would you describe your music? And how do you differ from other Alternative Metal bands?

VB: Yes, you’re right, it’s a wide term, we were described in the press in a million ways and in a certain way everyone was right. I think the problem is wanting to label everything around us. Art and music by definition are conceptual elaborations and translations of concepts according to the sensitivity of the artist. For this reason, music must be authentic, by this I don’t mean original, I consider originality a false myth. Again, for this reason, when something is identical to something else so much so that it can be labeled with the same name, it is not really something artistic. If we look at great artists who are part of a “musical genre” we will notice huge differences in their music, despite the label. Each of them has their own way of translating concepts into music. If this is the reason why it’s difficult to label our music, it means we’re doing a good job. As I said before, we describe our music as a blend of different musical genres, forms and styles. We mix a lot of different things in our songs, music is always at the service of the expression and emotion we describe in that moment, it could probably be described as emotional art. For me music has always been a means of expression, I have studied music a lot in my life, I have two degrees in musicology, and I have been studying singing and instruments since I was a child. We like the definition “alternative metal” because it includes many meanings and means many things together without specifying one in particular.

MHF: On “Demons” you were still a foursome. According to the info on “Live And True” you are still a trio. Has Daniele Cristellon left the band? Did you hire a guest musician for the live show?

VB: Well actually we have always been a kind of trio, we have always had guest musicians as guitarists. Most of them stayed with us for the entire duration of a project, album or tour, so you could say they were part of the band for a while. Daniele Cristellon has been with us for a long time, he was part of the album “Demons” and several tours, and you will hear him again in the recordings of the next album. But as far as the actual formation of the band is concerned, there are only three of us and we have always been the same since 2017, when we really started doing this job.

MHF: During the concert there are only announcements in Italian. Was the resulting CD only planned for the Italian market?

VB: No, it depends on the country we are in for the show. In Italy I speak Italian, but abroad I usually speak English during shows. “Live and True” is a complete recording of a show we performed in Florence in 2022, which is why I speak Italian on the album. It may seem strange that we chose to release a live album where we only speak in Italian during the show, but we wanted to forever fix a special moment in our career, take a photograph of our essence on stage in Florence, our home. The concert has always been one of the fundamental experiences and part of our work, an important piece to fully understand our music. During the performance, a deep connection is created with the audience and a synergy that cannot be reproduced in the recording studio. For this reason we decided to release a live album, to share this experience with all our fans around the world, since some of them haven’t seen us live yet. 

MHF: So far, only a live CD has been released. Is a DVD also planned?

VB: No, only in audio format, no DVD. We would like the listener to focus on the music and not on looking at a screen. The invitation is to close your eyes, put on your headphones and listen to the performance, so as to transport you to the center of one of our concerts.

MHF: In my opinion, the highlight of “Demons” and “Live And True” is the Violet Blend version of the canzone “La Donna Mobile” from the opera “Rigoletto” by Giuseppe Verdi. Why did you decide to cover this song?

VB: As a classical musicologist, I’ve always had to study and deal with music written by men, where women were always secondary characters with little to think or say. “La Donna è Mobile” is one of the most famous arias of 19th century Italian opera, but I realized that very few people really knew its meaning. It is misogynist and discriminatory, and even if it was written during the 19th century, I find it terribly current. We decided to reinvent this famous aria and to use it provocatively as the soundtrack of a project that we have created to promote equality, defend the fundamental rights of women and raise public awareness on the issue of the gender discrimination and violence. The project is called: “La Donna Mobile (Fickle Woman) – Campaign against gender discrimination and violence”. It is a non-profit project to promote equality, empowerment, education and information, focused on the role of women in the world of work. The project is non-profit and is aimed at obtaining donations for the projects of AIDOS – Italian Association of Women for Development. We donated the rights to two songs “Need” and “La Donna Mobile” and organized an event whose proceeds were donated to AIDOS, with the patronage of the Municipality of Florence (Italy), the collaboration of the Riccardiana Library of Florence, of Verdi Theater – ORT Foundation of Florence, Viper Theater of Florence. More than 30 testimonials participated in the campaign, women who in their lives and work have had and must face discrimination and gender violence and who wanted to make their contribution. They are all women who do “men’s jobs”, from the conductor Gianna Fratta to the Italian National Team soccer player Alia Guagni, from the Astrophysics Paola Santini to the only one Italian hospital chief Alessandra Kustermann, and many more. We would like to invite you all to discover more by visiting the page: https://www.violetblend.cloud/ladonnamobileeng/

MHF: If you look at the list of your concerts, apart from a UK tour and a gig in Switzerland, there are only concerts in Italy. Are you also planning shows in other European countries in the future?

VB: Definitely, this year we will try to reach as many countries as possible in Europe. In the last two years we have been forced to go on tour only in Italy, after the pandemic the costs have had big peaks, the venues have halved, the fees have lowered and therefore we had to give up leaving our country for a while. In 2018 and 2019 we toured the UK twice (where our fan base is concentrated in addition to Italy) and we were also planning a tour in some cities in North America and Latin America for 2020. It was our big dream, but we were alone, we had to organize it with our own strength, and we were unable to realize it, firstly due to the pandemic and immediately afterwards due to all the effects that the pandemic brought about. In 2024 we are focusing our efforts on Europe, from June on we will return to the UK and participate in some festivals, and we will go to countries we have never been to in Europe. Compared to a few years ago we are lucky enough to work with agencies that take care of our tours and therefore everything will be easier. All European tour dates will be announced in the coming months.

MHF: What’s next for Violet Blend? Are you already working on a follow-up to the 2022 “Demons” album?

VB: Yes, we’re currently working on new songs and we’re very thrilled about this new project. We’re experimenting a lot with sounds, with electronic music and dissonances. We are integrating an elegant electronic vein with Varèsian reminiscences and making a delicate shift towards programmatic symphonism with a view to emancipating dissonance. The musical discourse will remain firmly anchored to the vocal melody, the vocals will remain the listener’s main guide, but they will fit and integrate into a changing soundscape, in which harmonic clarity juxtaposes and coexists with a universe of lights and shadows.

MHF: Thank you again for the interview. Is there anything else you would like to say to your fans at the end?

VB: Thank you for having me, it was a real pleasure! I invite all the readers to follow our social pages for all updates about new tours and releases. Thank you again and greetings from Italy!

Giada Celeste Chelli