We’re lucky, Florence is in a cool position: it’s easy to travel all over Italy because we’re in the centre of the country, and also not that far from the rest of Europe’s capitals. We love to travel and thanks to our music we get to discover a lot of the world and meet so many different people. Travelling is tiring and stressful, but so satisfying.
What is the most notable difference between crowds in the different places you travel?
Every country has a different approach to live music, I’d say that the most intense crowds are the French or the South Americans. Italians are fairly quiet generally and Americans are the best buyers: they are really into supporting bands because music is so integral to their culture.
Why do you choose to sing in English rather than Italian? Is commercial viability a factor?
If you’re a musician or an artist, I believe it is because you have a message to share, so singing just in Italian can exclude you from performing abroad or sharing your message to everyone in the world. We love a lot of Italian music but I think that singing in English helps express our music better and it is an easier way to “speak” with our fans all over the planet.
That was an old description that a friend of ours gave us. I think Go!Zilla music is simply a mix of the music that we listen to and of our personalities without giving genre labels or names. Recently we’ve been exploring a different sound that a lot of friends are describing as “rock music for soundtracks”: we haven’t released anything new yet but you’ll be able to listen to our new production in a few months’ time.
People often say difficult political times lead to great music, do you think alternative/rock/punk music is reacting and responding to the current social turmoil?
I don’t think this happening right now, not in rock’n’roll music. I think nowadays the great new music is coming out from other genres of music, rock music seems a bit stuck in a black hole because records are not being sold as well as they were in the past and it seems like people are less interested, but I’m confident in the cyclicality of the music world. One of the last artists who described his time perfectly was Kurt Cobain in the early 90’s.
Tell me about the beautiful artwork on your albums, who creates it?
So far we have had a lot of cool people doing artwork for us: my favourite one is made by Elzo Durt (Thee Oh Sees, La femme etcetera) that made the cover for our 7” EP Pollution/Gambling with the Crocodile.
It’s essential! And English people do it better than everyone else. You need to create a brand to be “recognisable” more than just being connected to a musical genre. Great bands don’t stick to one label, they are just crossing genres and styles.
In a notoriously competitive industry, what would you attribute to your success?
We have grown by playing live shows, that’s where most people have discovered us. Though now is a little different as we’re playing a little bit less whilst we produce our records.
Which other artists do you admire the most? Why?
There’s a UK band we like called Fat White Family, and recently we’ve been into a lot of music from South America. We’re trying to discover and learn different rhythms and feelings and they’re being incorporated into our new record.
Every record of Go!Zilla has come out in a different period of our lives, with different feelings and influences. The new direction we’re taking is to make music a bit more complex with new instruments in the line-up. How do I expect our fans to react? With laughter, hatred, joy, fear, whatever feeling… the main goal for an artist is to obtain a reaction from the listener, indifference is the only thing that scares those who are creating something.
What’s next for Go!Zilla?
I hope we get to play on the Moon soon, I heard from next year there will be a chance to go there.
