Hold on to your hats, readers, because we have an extreme Metal veteran among us. Raffaella Rivarolo, better known as Cadaveria, the frontwoman of the band of the same name, is an Italian musician who has been active since the early nineties. Cadaveria took a progressive approach to her music throughout her career, expanding and changing her style and approach with each project.
Cadaveria added a new album, “Emptiness,” to her rich musical legacy this year.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Cadaveria and asking her about her music and her thoughts on various topics. Take a look at this interview with the iconic Cadaveria.
Hello, Cadaveria. It’s really wonderful to chat with you. How are you doing today?
Hi, I’m superfine, thank you. It’s a busy and cool period, due to the release of the new album and also some reissues of previous albums.
You have recently released a new album called “Emptiness”. How are you feeling about the way your fans reacted to the album?
The reactions are really excellent, exceeding all expectations. I had no idea how this album was going to be received by the audience. We don’t make music to please others, we’ve been in the studio for a long time to shape our emotions, we let our intentions, our moods flow freely and we made an album according to a very personal taste. I am really very happy that everybody is enjoying it so much. I receive many messages that say “it’s not just an album, I feel that your heart is in, I feel that it is a point of arrival and a container of great emotions and beautiful music”. I am very satisfied and happy.
How would you describe your sound to someone who hasn’t heard Cadaveria’s music before?
It’s a question I never know what to answer. I realize that somehow it is necessary to classify the music, to put labels to give direction to the potential listener, for this I will say that our genre is a mix of Black Metal and Gothic Metal. However, I think it is an absolutely reductive definition. In fact, our songs welcome influences that come from Death and Progressive Metal, but all this flows into our music in a spontaneous way, not because it was decided at the table. You have to know that many of the guitar riffs actually originate in my mind as vocal melodies, and then they become guitar riffs. This is why they are so special because they are often not born from the mind of a guitarist, but of a singer. So they are out of the box and very personal. We are very free in composition, we are not interested in belonging to any genre and we do not follow any trend. Indeed I can say that we have often been the ones to launch trends.
This sounds very interesting and innovative. If you were to pick one song from “Emptiness” to be played on every radio and every station all over the world, which song would you pick and why?
You must know that before the album some songs like ”Matryoshcada”, ”Divination”, ”Shamanic Path”, and” The Woman Who Fell to Earth” were released as singles. In truth, we have curated all the songs as if they were singles, so there are no songs put there just to make numbers or minutes. For this reason, each song is worthy of being listened to and broadcast on the radio. Just think that almost for every song we have also made a music video. Really each song is a story in itself. Surely I would like everyone to listen to the title track, ”Emptiness”, because it contains a message that is very important to me, which is to be free from the thought of the past and the future, to create that emptiness in the mind that allows you to stay in the here and now and to enjoy only the present. Because we are a breath away, and tomorrow may be too late.
Wonderful! In order to get to know you better and from a different point of view, how about playing some imagination game? I will set a scenario in an alternate universe with new rules and see how you’d react to the different situations. Ready?
Go!
In a universe where you are made the queen of a country, what would be the first law you’d make?
The first law I would like to make is that animals must not be exploited or eaten. Every living being has the same right to live.
In a universe where humans can choose either to be able to teleport from one place to another or travel back and forth in time, which superpower would you pick?
I would like to be able to teleport from one place to another to be able to visit many places and many cultures without having to spend hours and hours on the plane.
Nice! In a universe where you’re the statue of liberty, what object would you be holding instead of a torch?
A heart, as a symbol of love, which can overcome all evil.
In a universe where money does not exist, but instead, people pay for things by making other people laugh, how rich would you be considered?
I find it a fantastic idea! I probably wouldn’t be very rich but that would spur me to smile more, certainly with great benefit to my life.
In a universe where the senses of taste and hearing are mixed up together, what food would you imagine Cadaveria’s music would taste like?
Cotton candy.
In a universe where making magic is real, what would your favourite spell do?
To heal the wounds of the soul.
Wonderful! Thank you for playing, Cadaveria! I hope you enjoyed this!
There are many things you need to do when you release an album other than the music itself. What were your favourite and least favourite parts of the process of releasing “Emptiness”?
It is a double-edged sword: we are the producers of ourselves and we are artists at 360 degrees as we take care not only of the music but also of all the visual parts, including videos. All of this is creative, productive and cool. Clearly, it is also very stressful and tiring. In general, I really like the creation part, so I like being in the studio, thinking about the graphic concept, and coming up with a new video. For example, the creation of the cover art with the female “tao-snake” and the black & white concept (which led to the double two-tone vinyl) was very interesting and fun.
The downside is that you have to spend a lot of time on the computer to make all of these things tangible. Even the promotion itself that passes through the PC, smartphones, and social networks, are things that I don’t like to do but that must be done because now everything necessarily passes through the internet. Sometimes it is disheartening to observe that your promotional efforts are not enough, because you should have a lot of capital to invest in order for your video to reach millions of views.
This is very true. Have you ever faced any kind of sexism in your professional or personal life? How would you deal with sexist behaviour and what advice would you give young people around the world who face any kind of discrimination?
Yes, unfortunately, I still experience unpleasant situations of discrimination today. The worst part is that they are behaviorally veiled, as no one has the courage to admit that they are sexist. But in the end what happens is that if a promoter has to choose whether to play a group of all men rather than another where there is a woman, in the end, he chooses the group of men only. The woman is seen as a weak link in the chain and she is good for marketing only if she falls within the standards of beauty proposed by contemporary society.
Thank you for giving us this interview, Cadaveria. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Thanks to you for this interview. I remind everybody that “Emptiness” was released on CD, double vinyl and also in a cassette of various colors and can be purchased on our website cadaveria.com I also recommend watching our music videos (“Silver Rain” and “The Sky That Screams Above Us” are the latest released) available on the channel youtube.com/cadaveriaofficial See you!
