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An Interview with Andy Deane of Bella Morte
Posted: Sunday, November 16, 2008
By: Matthew Johnson
Assistant Editor

It's been a tumultuous year for Virginia gothic rockers Bella Morte, but between the departure of bassist and band co-founder Gopal Metro and a manic concert schedule that saw them touring with coldwave legends 16volt and Misfits guitarist Doyle's Gorgeous Frankenstein project, the group managed to write and record what lead singer Andy Deane describes as "the defining Bella Morte release." Translated rather than literally self-titled, Beautiful Death incorporates the shredding guitar solos Tony Lechmanski unleashed on last year's Bleed the Grey Sky Black, the polish and punk energy of As the Reasons Die, and the moody but infectious electronics of their early work, plus some of the most dynamic vocals Deane has ever recorded. Engineered and mastered by keyboardist Micah Consylman, the album marks a further step in Bella Morte's evolution, and you couldn't blame them if they wanted to take a break for a while and bask in the glory of their accomplishments. That's the furthest thing from Deane's mind, though; as he tells ReGen, he's not only gearing up to promote the album with more shows, he's already working on new material with the band, and if that weren't enough, he's somehow managed to find the time to write his first horror novel (The Sticks, to be published next spring by Delirium Books). Finding a moment to talk to ReGen, he expounds on his hectic touring schedule, his favorite horror writers, and why the new album represents the purest incarnation of Bella Morte yet.

Beautiful Death has just come out. How would you characterize it in comparison to the past few albums?

Deane: It's definitely still got a harder edge, but I think there's so much growth on this album. We've incorporated some of the darker sounds of our early work, and I feel like we've made an album full of these mini-epics, these three and four-minute songs that just have this huge all-encompassing feel, a very triumphant sound that's very dark at the same time.

You've stated before that you felt that As the Reasons Die was a very 'processed' album, whereas you recorded Bleed the Grey Sky Black with much more of a 'live' feel. Where on that spectrum does the new album fall?

Deane: This one's right in the middle, actually. These songs are so fun to play out live, and because we did the recording ourselves – Micah actually engineered the entire CD, and it's the first completely self-engineered album we've ever put out – it's the most pure thing we've done. It sounds exactly the way we want it to sound. It's the sound we've been envisioning for a lot of years, finally come to life, and so far the reviews we've been getting have been phenomenal. A lot of fans our really early darkwave stuff have kind of come back into the fold, and they're like, 'This is kind of the reason I fell in love with you guys,' but at the same time we've totally moved forward with our sound.

This is the first album you've done since Gopal Metro left the band and you brought in Tony Pugh on bass. How did that affect putting the new album together, and what has he brought to the mix?

Deane: Well, Tony's incredible. We've been friends since kindergarten. I've known him basically my entire life. I've known him longer than any other friend I have, and we've been close for a long time. We were even in a metal band called Nerve No Pain for years after high school. Where Gopal was more of a melody player, Tony is much more of a 'backbone' sort of bassist. He likes thudding along with the kick drum and really just providing a solid, rock-oriented sound. It's been great playing with him; I didn't have any questions as to whether his sound would fit the band; I'd played with him before.

So it's not like it was just some stranger brought into the mix or something.

Deane: Exactly. There wasn't even an audition; it was kind of like, 'If that guy wants to do it, he's going to be able to do it.' We knew he would fit.

It seems like with Bleed the Grey Sky Black as well as Beautiful Death that you've really started to let a little more of your metal side come out, and it seems like Tony Lechmanski has really started to cut loose with his guitar solos. Are you listening to more metal these days, or are you just more confident bringing out that side of the music now that metal is coming back into popularity again?

Deane: The ironic thing is that when I first got into underground music, when I was 13 or 14 or whatever age I was, it was metal. That was my first love. I was brought up on Iron Maiden and Metallica and stuff like that. I didn't get into goth until much later, my late teens, so to me metal's always been there. When I started doing Bella Morte, it was a side project of Nerve No Pain, and of course there was no metal in it because I already had a metal band. With me and Gopal, it was just he and I and a drum machine, and you really can't even make metal that way unless you're Godflesh or somebody, and it's not easy to do. We were much more into making these melodic, slow dirges, and I love those old albums, but as we moved on, first to pick up a drummer, then to replace one guitarist with Tony Lechmanski, who's much more of a shredder on guitar, just a really great guitarist, it just went from one person to the next. We're not one of these bands where I'm the complete mastermind and then I hire musicians. We're a band; we're a band in the true sense of the word, and everybody has a say in what goes on here. It's not a matter of letting something out, it's more of a matter of making what we love when we love to make it. Bleed the Grey Sky Black is a lot more metal than the new album, by far, but at the same time, when we put it out that was being true to ourselves. Releasing anything else would have been a lie. You can cater to existing fans, or you can cater to potential fans, but I think the thing to do in the end is block out their voices and say, 'I want to release a great album,' and that's what we try to do. After releasing Bleed, we had a real want to bring synths back into the mix on the album, and to shorten the songs a little bit, and I think we accomplished that really well. The synthesizer plays a much heavier role in the new album. Also, there's a lot of rhythmic vocals on Bleed the Grey Sky Black, a little bit less of me using my full range, whereas the new album is such a vocally intense album, by far the most vocally demanding thing I've ever done in my life. That was a lot of fun to do, to explore how low I can get and how high I can get again.

To get briefly back to the whole metal question, have you ever though of doing a straight-up metal homage release, like you did with death rock on the Death Rock and Songs for the Dead EPs?

Deane: It's never really come up. I think if I ever did something metal, it would more likely be in a side project, first of all because I don't know that Metropolis Records would be the best home for a metal release, and second, it wouldn't feel like Bella Morte, you know? I think Bleed the Grey Sky Black is about as metal as this band is willing to get, and the new album took a little bit of a step in the other direction.

It just seems like after those two EPs, there might be a market out there for a Bella Morte EP of all Iron Maiden covers.

Deane: We have toyed with the idea of a Maiden cover, don't get me wrong!

Which one would you cover?

Deane: 'The Evil That Men Do.' We were trying to pick one that would kind of work with our sound. The thing is, we've just been too busy to even think of cover tunes. In recent months we did a lot of touring, this summer we recorded an album, and now it's all the promotion to push this album.

You've been on tour more or less nonstop over the spring and summer, first with 16volt and then with Gorgeous Frankenstein. Did you get a chance to play the stuff from the new album while you were on tour?

Deane: We did. I think we had one of the tracks in our set on the 16volt tour, and I think we had three of the songs in our set on the Gorgeous Frankenstein tour. Now we're up to doing six, and I'm pretty sure we'll have the whole album down. We're playing a lot of new stuff, and it's going over amazingly well in front of audiences.

With such a whirlwind of tour activity, do you have any crazy new stories from the road?

Deane: Man, there are so many damn stories! I'd have to wrack my brain a little bit, but we run into crap all the time. I remember a tire blowing out somewhere between L.A. and San Francisco in a hundred degree weather.

Your most recent tour was with Gorgeous Frankenstein, which is the new project from Doyle of The Misfits. How did that end up coming about?

Deane: We got contacted by them. We had a booking agent in common. They were looking for an opening band, we got suggested, and we were the one they wanted, so we took the tour. We like to be on the road as much as we can.

You're not one of those bands that just plays a perfunctory show every couple of years. In the last few months it's been three tours in three months, hasn't it?

Deane: We did two full tours, and then we did show after show outside of the tour, so it averages out to about three.

While we're talking about playing live, your stage presence doesn't really owe a lot to the usual goth icons like Peter Murphy or even Glenn Danzig. In fact, the first person that comes to mind is Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, because you're a lot less swirly and a lot more bouncy than the typical goth performer. Who are some of your own icons as front-men?

Deane: Ironically, I've never seen him live, but I'm definitely a huge fan of Mike Patton. I'm a big Danzig fan. Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden. And it's funny, but I am a big Anthony Kiedis fan, as well; once again, I've never caught those guys live, but I really like that band. That'd be a good handful right there that have had an impact on me when I was young.

To shift gears a little bit, you've written a novel, The Sticks, that's coming out next year. What can you tell us about it?

Deane: It's coming out on Delirium Books some time in the summer. I know the hardback comes out in June, but I believe it's already sold out at this point through pre-orders. It's a horror novel, and it's got a very southern feel to it, me being a Virginia boy. The main character's got a very southern flair to him, and he's kind of dealing with the monsters showing up in his life. It's got a sense of humor, but not in an overt sense like Shaun of the Dead or something like that. It's more like, the situation is not funny at all, but the character himself is a funny guy. He's got a sense of humor about it, and you're seeing the world through his eyes. I'm excited as hell for that to happen; I actually started writing this book while we were on tour, just killing hours while we're riding around.

Do you get to do a lot of reading while you're on the road? Who are some of your favorite horror writers?

Deane: I do. I don't know if you'd exactly call the guy horror, but Joe Lansdale is probably one of my very favorites. He's fucking amazing. As far as newer guys, Brian Keene has written some great zombie novels. Simon Clarke has a book called The Stranger that I really liked, and Jack Ketchum is excellent. I'm into the classic stuff, too, like Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson, and Mary Shelly is one of my favorite authors.

You're also a well-known horror movie buff. Have you discovered any new favorites, or are there any new movies coming out that you're excited about seeing?

Deane: As far as recent favorites, I've been watching a lot of French horror, and I just watched a movie called Inside a couple of months back, and I'd recommend that to anybody. It's a really well-developed story, and it delivers not just on the plot but also on the gore. It's just a really cool film. It looks great, the story's great, and it's bloody as fucking all hell. That was a great one. And a lot of people didn't like it, but I actually liked The Strangers. I thought it was cool, and I'm looking forward to the uncut version coming out on DVD soon. Another movie you should check out is called Them; it's another French movie, and it's got that sort of feel to it. I wonder if The Strangers came out of that, possibly. If you liked The Strangers, you'll like Them. It seems like right now all the best gore is coming out of France.

What is next on the Bella Morte agenda? More shows, no doubt?

Deane: There's definitely going to be a ton of touring and pushing this album. I've never been more proud of an album in the history of the band. It's the first one that, after it was done, we looked at it – and I know it's not exactly self-titled, but it's the closest we're ever going to get – it was the first one that I looked at and thought, 'This is that album that I want to put the band's stamp on.' This feels like the essential release of Bella Morte, you know? The defining release. So far the reviews have reflected that, which has been great. Criticism always hurts, no matter how small a source it comes from, it's always kind of painful to read someone in 30 seconds just slamming something you've put your whole heart into, so to have it actually coming in the other way... We've really had very few people at all that are criticizing this album, which has been great. It's a really great feeling, seeing all of this positivity flowing in about the release, so we're going to be pushing like hell to take this album as far as we can.

So you haven't started working on the next one yet?

Deane: There are actually a couple of songs that, due to time constraints, didn't make it onto this album, so we're going to start the next album with them. As far as songs that not everybody in the band knows yet, but that one or two of us have written the skeletons of, we've got enough songs for several albums. But I like to not call it a song until everybody's had their hands on it and it's kind of taken on some kind of true form. From what I can tell so far, it seems like the next album is going to sound a lot like this album. We feel we've found a groove that we really fit, and we don't really feel a need to stray too far from what we're doing right now. This album feels like Bella Morte in its purest, and that's what we want to be.