Interview with Luca Indrio of Necrot by DJ Jet, April 2024.
Oakland, California-based Necrot continues to carry on their journey in the production of their pulverising third LP "Lifeless Birth" out now on Tankcrimes Records. Founded by bassist/vocalist Luca Indrio and drummer Chad Gailey in 2011 with guitarist Sonny Reinhardt joining the following year, the trio continue to push forward in their progression as a band which comes through loud and clear on their new offering. Luca sat down with us to talk about the new album as well as his thoughts on AI in the future of music.
ViaOmega - Hey everybody, we're here with our guest today. We have Luca Indrio of Necrot. Welcome, Luca.
LUCA- Thanks for having me.
ViaOmega - So Necrot's out of California, but Luca is originally from Italy. You became a citizen in 2016, but did I read that you currently reside in Mexico? Is that correct?
LUCA-Yeah, I've been living in Mexico for the last four years.
ViaOmega- And just out of curiosity what made you want to make the move to Mexico?
LUCA-Oh, just prices are getting too expensive in California. It's good and bad.
ViaOmega - Yeah, just like everywhere.
LUCA-Yeah, true. I mean, I speak fluent Spanish, and my wife is Mexican. So, culturally, growing up in Italy is way closer, as it's a Latin country. So for me, it was really easy to adapt here.
ViaOmega - You guys recently got back from a pretty extensive tour, how did that go?
LUCA-It was fantastic. We had a great time, and it was a really successful tour for every band involved. And I feel like it's something that we wanted to do for a long time because we have been friends with the guys in Ghoul and the guys in Municipal Waste for a long time. And there is definitely a connection with Scotty from Tankcrimes, who has released all three bands and has been a roadie for Municipal Waste for many years. The tour was really fun just to be with a bunch of people who already knew each other before the tour. So it was just like a lot of good times. The shows were packed, and everybody played really well. So it was really fun.
ViaOmega: And now Necrot has a new album coming out on the 12th. But Luca, after your last album, the band had all kinds of shit thrown at you, from family health issues to personal health, with Chad having his back problem and you having problems and Sonny and all this kind of stuff. Is everybody OK now, Luca?
LUCA: Everyone's great now. Yeah, life definitely threw some stuff at us that we had to face. But things are looking brighter because of the album about to come out and we have a couple more tours booked in the very near future. So everything that we had to go through is finally just something from the past.
ViaOmega: And of course, the last time I interviewed Chad was back in 2019, just before the whole world changed.
LUCA-True. Absolutely. So, yeah, we were pretty excited in 2019, and then we had to make this big stop with the pandemic and all the personal issues. But I feel like now we're back to that 2019 excitement just with a new album.
ViaOmega - What do you do to prepare for the tour? And during the tour, what are some practices, if any, that you adhere to to kind of keep you guys on top of your game?
LUCA-Well, you know, we always practice. We always practice separately to keep the songs fresh and to be able to be tight. And during the tour, we just try to take our time to rest when it's possible to do that, because, you know, you're on tour to perform at your best every night. So it's like you need to sometimes set aside everything else during the tour to just find the time to get some rest and be able every night to perform at your best.
ViaOmega - With the emotions and frustrations of all the crap that was going on in between albums with you guys and the world did any of this come through on the new album?
LUCA-Yeah, one-hundred percent. It was inevitable. You take inspiration from what happens in your life and what you see around you. We saw so much in the last few years, like everything that happened during COVID, and I definitely had a lot of frustration and things that needed to come out of my chest. I laid some of that down in my lyrics. Our lyrics always go through, like, you know, the topics of mortality and the human condition. But they always do well. Also, like how society and the way humans struggle in this world, both for our human condition and mortality, but also because of the oppression and everything that gets thrown on top of us just from politicians and media, the way they want us to see things. So black and white. So, so dividing. You know, I feel that, especially during the pandemic, there was like very little space for conversation when people were just like pushed in a corner and tried to talk. I just feel that in so many situations, instead of bringing people together, they try to bring people against each other. There are problems in society, and lots of them are created by people like these greedy people in power. Instead of taking the blame, they just want us to blame each other. And I felt that during the pandemic and before the pandemic, there was, you know, political division that was being created in the United States, especially, but probably everywhere in the world. I was experiencing that. I just feel that, you know, people have been really pushed to the limit. And I feel that it's a good time now, after the pandemic and everything, to disconnect a little bit from our phones and news and all these things that tend to divide people, while, you know, our human condition is already pretty complicated without all of that on top of it.
ViaOmega -And the name of the album is "Lifeless Birth". How does it tie into the rest of the album?
LUCA-Well, I've always had a lot of thoughts about that and the meaning of life because it's such a short period of time and, you know, you're not really sure what you're supposed to do. Especially because there is this situation where, no matter what you do, no matter who you meet, or whatever, no matter what you end up accomplishing in this life, you end up getting completely erased by time because everything inevitably gets forgotten and inevitably is gone forever. So to me, it's something that I've always thought a lot about, and to try and find the meaning to that and kind of try to find a way to make this a strength instead of a reason for constant desperation. So I feel that like Lifeless Birth is kind of like, since the moment that you're born, you are condemned to die and be completely forgotten. So it's like, especially when you see people dying, that they're old and they're already in a mental state where most people they know have already died.
You know, if you get to live a long time, you're just going to see everybody die around you. And slowly, you're going to feel less and less attachment to this life. And I felt that kind of like that thought that inevitably, like in the best scenario, you're going to get to that situation, which is pretty frightening.
But it's like, again, since the moment that you're born, you're condemned to some kind of moment of losing everything and being forgotten completely. So I felt that, when someone is born, they are already condemned to be gone. So I just felt that combination into something like Lifeless Birth, like, you know, one more person who is going to be born and struggle so hard to create something and find some peace in his life or some sense to it or some meaning. But then, at the end, you're going to have to face the complete destruction of everything you have created, loved, wanted, or done to make your life, you know, livable. So Lifeless Birth is kind of like that.
ViaOmega -So why did you guys pick "Cut the Cord" as the first single off the album?
LUCA- We didn't pick it. We had Scotty from Tankcrimes, our record label, pick songs that would have been the singles. And he decided on "Cut the Cord" and "Drill the Skull." I was OK with it. I really didn't care which songs would have been premiered first, because eventually everybody who wants to listen to the album will be able to. And, you know, I like all the songs. I think his motivations were mostly because Cut the Cord sounds a lot like Necrot, like our style and our sound. And I think that he liked that it also had a very actual meaning in the lyrics that people could relate to.
ViaOmega: And like you said, it's very much Necrot, you know, so people didn't get afraid that you went in a whole different direction.
LUCA-Exactly.
ViaOmega -So tell us how you feel the band has progressed over the years and how this kind of steady progression of the band comes across on the new album musically, maybe compared to past albums.
LUCA- Well, to me, it feels like, you know, we have been a band for 13 years, and we've been progressing in what we do and our sound. And I think that, too, because of the amount of touring that we have been doing and will do, you get a lot more confidence and a lot more feedback about what you do. And I think that it's just a natural progression. I feel like Necrot is a band that moves slowly, kind of like, you know, we are constantly improving, in my opinion, but we never drop completely what we're doing to do something else. We're following a line that says that our sound is what we've always wanted to do and the kind of metal that we like. And we don't really care what happens around us, like what's popular, what other bands are doing, or whatnot. So it's like, you know, I feel like we're just getting better at what we do. I feel like our songwriting is better.
I feel like our aggressive parts are more aggressive, and our melodic parts, which we always add, are a little bit more interesting. And we have parts that are more slower or groovy, which we always add. And I feel like they're getting heavier. I just feel we're refining what we've already been doing, and we're just following the natural progression of our sound and our band.
ViaOmega - Your cover art was done again by Marald Van Haasteren. So a lot of bands lately have been choosing A.I. art for their covers, and some bands are experimenting with A.I. music as well. So what are your thoughts on all this? And do you think musically A.I. will replace real humans in the future of music?
LUCA: Well, probably partially. I mean, it's like, you know, you cannot stop progress in any way. But, as we've seen in many aspects of life, often progress doesn't mean better. Doing music or art with AI is a shortcut that probably creates the possibility of having things done faster or having more production. But it's garbage. It's like the quality goes down. If you think about it, if you compare it with food, a lot of progress that has been made in creating food that resists better weather conditions or is able to feed more people usually is the price to pay for the quality of the food, you know, or if you look at fast food that is able to feed a lot of people in a quick way, then the quality of the food is worse. So it's going to fill that gap of a consumer need to produce things fast and sell them. But it's definitely going to affect the quality of the music or the art that is being produced with that. So I am, of course, against it, and I have a negative perspective on it. But, you know, it's just something that fills the need of this war that is like so consumeristic and so based on selling products rather than giving value to what we consume.
ViaOmega: Lifeless Birth via Tank Crimes is out on April 12th. You can follow Necrot on all the social media sites and Bandcamp. And Luca, thank you for your time. And I wish you and the band all the best and good health.
LUCA- Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
