Getting to Know… Arya | Interview 🎤

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On Interview #115 in the Getting to Know… series, guitarist Luca Parsini answers our burning questions about his band, Arya, from Italy.

“We’re a band that loves contaminating genres and experimenting with unorthodox approaches, in order to create music that’s powerful and unpredictable and not to repeat ourselves.” Whoa – what a totally gnarly, rad answer! Go ahead and drop that mic Arya! The Italian progressive metal/experimental/rock band adds to our ever-growing Q&A interview series, continue to make us totally woke to a number of talented artists and bands worldwide. That, folks, is a truly rewarding experience. The band’s guitarist, Luca Pasini, provides the answer to our burning questions on Getting to Know… Arya: Interview #115. Also, I’m digging the shade Pasini drops on question one 😉 – read on to find out for yourself!

Let’s get this started off right. For those who may not be familiar with Arya, what would you say makes your band distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

We’re a band that loves contaminating genres and experimenting with unorthodox approaches, in order to create music that’s powerful and unpredictable and not to repeat ourselves. One could say we’re a progressive metal band, but we’d be probably different from what you could expect if you think about the stereotypes of that genre (especially that American band whose guitarist has an Italian surname, and that I’ve never liked at all). During the years we’ve taken inspiration from other styles of metal, but also indie and alternative rock, and jazz.

So far, most reviewers have said that we sound unique and unlike any other band, but that’s not always a good thing, as it makes fans of most genres feel equally lost and out of place, especially now that we live in the age of playlisting and strict genre divisions and criteria to match.

Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did Arya form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on?

The band started out from a bunch of songs I had recorded just after finishing a music production course, in 2014, that later became our first album In Distant Oceans. I had recently discovered the “djent” metal scene, where many musicians were presenting music they had recorded at home on their own, and I was fascinated and inspired by bands such as Tesseract, Periphery, The Safety Fire and Skyharbor.

I was in a quite bad moment in my life, so, instead of quitting it, I decided to try and find people to create a new, more “serious” and “professional” band. A metal band, even if I came from a totally different background. I was quite naive back then and much more optimistic than now; I still had many things to learn about how independent music works in our local area and globally.

Let’s talk more about goals. Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

In the beginning, maybe I used to think it would have been possible to make a living by recording and performing my own music. Nowadays, I know it won’t probably ever happen if I insist on making music that I like and that I feel intimately bound to. I could have made compromises if I wanted to make money as a musician: I could have tried to work as a performer on cruise ships or town fairs, I could have tried to make music I know is selling now, but as of now, I prefer to be free and play whatever I like, without having to think about money.

Right now, my aspirations are simply to create meaningful music that can communicate something to someone, inspire, make the world better. And maybe also to be appreciated as a musician and to perform my music around the world.

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

I’ve had so many during the years! If we consider the music of Arya specifically, as I said we started out as a djent-inspired band, but almost immediately evolved as we became a full band, in order to incorporate whatever was inspiring each member in any moment. Sometimes, when I listen to random music I like, I realize that we ended up using a single idea or feature from that into one of our songs a long time before. Overall, however, if I have to think of who inspired the most the songs I’ve contributed writing for Arya, I could say Karnivool, Tesseract, Oathbreaker, Deafheaven, Daughter, Esperanza Spalding, Bent Knee, Astor Piazzolla, Gojira, but I’ve surely left out so many names!

Ah, the fun stuff. What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance? Feel free to be creative.

One night, a few years ago, we were playing in a quite empty club near Bologna. As we started the first song, I realized I couldn’t hear my guitar at all, neither in the monitors, nor in the reverb of the room. I got near to the amp, and I heard it was coming out of the speaker normally so, when the song ended, I took the microphone from our singer and informed the sound girl of the problem. She started yelling angrily at me through the empty room, saying it was so unprofessional from us to interrupt a performance in such a way, and that according to her everything could be heard perfectly. Our singer at the time was quite touchy and answered back to her, starting a brief discussion. We had decided to carry on with the set anyway when, suddenly, I heard my guitar gradually appearing into the monitors. Later on we watched a video of our performance taken by a friend of us, and it became clear she had forgotten to unmute my channel in the mixer but she didn’t want to admit it.

We never set foot again in that club because of that and other reasons, and I heard it had closed shortly after: the owner clearly wanted to exploit bands to make money by wanting them to pay to play there or not paying them at all, but it didn’t for him work anyway.

Wow! Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

My favourite Arya song to perform is “IKG” from the album Endesires: I think it’s such a good set opener, we still haven’t managed to top that afterwards. However maybe the song I’m most proud of overall is “Everlasting (End)”, also from Endesires, as it’s structured in a very unconventional way, more similar to a classical music piece than a song itself. I also really like what the others in the band did on that album, especially the vocals.

Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

I’d recommend checking out the album Ver Sacrum from the Italian post-metal band WOWS. They’re a six-piece band from Verona with whom I’ve shared the stage once, and they really sound massive and impressive: it’s a very dark album with black metal elements and big dynamic changes. It has inspired and will for sure inspire my songwriting. It’s one of my favourite rock/metal albums of 2020 together with Hush Mortal Core by the English songwriter Martin Grech and Caustics of a Tidal Spirit by the German band Woomera.

Closing things out, what is Arya currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.

We’ll be releasing our fourth full-length album, called For Ever, on October 20. We’re gradually uploading most of the songs from it on our YouTube channel and at our Bandcamp. It’s probably the heaviest and darkest record we’ve ever done, and it’s very autobiographic, as it’s about some really bad moments in our lives related to the recent history of the band itself. If you use Spotify, you can pre-save it here, it will really help us when it will be out to make it reach as much people as possible: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/aryaitaly/for-ever