Forgotten Torment Interview
Q: Can you talk about the history of Forgotten Torment?
A: Forgotten Torment started in 2021 and we published the first EP on 2022, but we have been playing around for years. We started learning classical music as children and then moved to blues but the goal was heavy metal. Maybe that is the reason why our name sounds so metal even if we are not playing that genre. Forgotten Torment simply clicked as the right name and it stuck. At the beginning we were like a gimmick metal band but then we diverge, we research for our own voice. Some of the recorded material before 2022 is unpublished and it will remain so. We have a signature style, however the first album and the second one are quite different. Musically we just let ourselves be without labelling. We must give a label to the music for obvious reasons but we don’t like any chains around our creativity.
Q: What inspired you to make Burn again? And is there any meaning behind the name?
A: The first EP Turn Back the Lost Dream captured the mild side of Forgotten Torment, this time around we got heavier, maybe angrier, definitely rougher. The meaning behind Burn again is the continuation of the fire iconography from the first album: the fire that symbolizes our music passion - the constructive side of the flame. But fire has also a destructive force, the exhaustion in writing and recording an album, expressing the pain inside, like the shipwreck on the beach. We concentrate 100% while in the creational process to the point of having a breakdown. We had to stop recording at times in order to cry or even for some days in order to recover. Burn again worked as a therapy: it is very introspective for us. We think the listeners can get the mood we were in right off the bat.
Q: Can you talk about some of the themes on the album? I was reading about how this is a concept album.
A: Burn again is a synesthetic journey, where music stimulates a visual image and the other way round. We wanted to start from the shipwreck on the beach that is featured on the cover and bring the listener to the beach, on the rocks of that beach, then to other elements like a forest (“Meet me by the forest”), the night, the cold (“Darkness night”), fire and the ashes after burning (“Burn again”). Every track wants to convey what are our feelings about this journey. The intro sets up the stage already. It has been recorded near the forest that we wander for inspiration: real footsteps, real rocks, real birds in the background. Together with the nature elements, we conceptualized the album in two parts, the first being more melancholic and the second part with more hope so to speak. The “again” can be seen as a recurrent element, not only dividing the album in two but also the track “Burn again” itself ends and then starts again.
Q: Can you talk about the history of Forgotten Torment?
A: Forgotten Torment started in 2021 and we published the first EP on 2022, but we have been playing around for years. We started learning classical music as children and then moved to blues but the goal was heavy metal. Maybe that is the reason why our name sounds so metal even if we are not playing that genre. Forgotten Torment simply clicked as the right name and it stuck. At the beginning we were like a gimmick metal band but then we diverge, we research for our own voice. Some of the recorded material before 2022 is unpublished and it will remain so. We have a signature style, however the first album and the second one are quite different. Musically we just let ourselves be without labelling. We must give a label to the music for obvious reasons but we don’t like any chains around our creativity.
Q: What inspired you to make Burn again? And is there any meaning behind the name?
A: The first EP Turn Back the Lost Dream captured the mild side of Forgotten Torment, this time around we got heavier, maybe angrier, definitely rougher. The meaning behind Burn again is the continuation of the fire iconography from the first album: the fire that symbolizes our music passion - the constructive side of the flame. But fire has also a destructive force, the exhaustion in writing and recording an album, expressing the pain inside, like the shipwreck on the beach. We concentrate 100% while in the creational process to the point of having a breakdown. We had to stop recording at times in order to cry or even for some days in order to recover. Burn again worked as a therapy: it is very introspective for us. We think the listeners can get the mood we were in right off the bat.
Q: Can you talk about some of the themes on the album? I was reading about how this is a concept album.
A: Burn again is a synesthetic journey, where music stimulates a visual image and the other way round. We wanted to start from the shipwreck on the beach that is featured on the cover and bring the listener to the beach, on the rocks of that beach, then to other elements like a forest (“Meet me by the forest”), the night, the cold (“Darkness night”), fire and the ashes after burning (“Burn again”). Every track wants to convey what are our feelings about this journey. The intro sets up the stage already. It has been recorded near the forest that we wander for inspiration: real footsteps, real rocks, real birds in the background. Together with the nature elements, we conceptualized the album in two parts, the first being more melancholic and the second part with more hope so to speak. The “again” can be seen as a recurrent element, not only dividing the album in two but also the track “Burn again” itself ends and then starts again.
Q: What is your creative process like?
A: As introduced by the question above, music stimulates in us a visual image that sticks throughout the creational process, or the other way round: we simply starts jamming and a visual image comes as a result. And by visual image we mean not only the physical aspect of it, like a flame, but also the sensation, the emotion that gives us at that point in time. It can make us sad or happy and all the other emotions in between. We find a riff or a chord we like and we expand on it: one guitar answers to the other, we experiment on effects. We often play a lot of songs of the music that we listen to as fun practice, in between our original material, and sometimes we record some of these songs as small bites for social media contained in the “Forgotten Torment Cover.” Covering black metal songs in our style is quite fun. Our music is as introverted and melancholic as our true selves but we also know how to have some amusement.
Q: What was your recording process like? And has it changed over the years? Would you explain some of the tools you use?
A: To keep the truth and the emotional status of the moment, we try to record all in one take. And this has never changed. It is too ambitious considering that a record stays forever and looking back you want to be proud of your work, so there are retakes. One experiment we did was adding, depending on the songs, some hidden guitars tracks that are lowered down so much that are undetectable as individual lines, but if there weren’t there, the sound would feel less full. On some tracks we recorded the solo twice (two variations of the solo) on the same part of the song and overlapped the takes, some distortions or eerie effects are created like this. The guitar always comes first and then we add strings and piano. Not all tracks have strings and piano but the majority do. We made the conscious decision of not using drums but it is not excluded - this decision might change in the future. The first album was an ordeal for self-imposed technical limitations: we recorded it with a looper. For Burn again we upgraded with a Scarlett. The big star of the show is the Jazzmaster, for sure, the nuances in sound that this guitar can give is perfect for our purposes. And then all goes to Garage Band. Home made and low budget give us freedom - time wise and control wise.
Q: How do you usually go about writing lyrics?
A: The only song that has lyrics is “Frost” and it was years we wanted to write a song inspired by Robert Frost’s poetry Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Mission accomplished eventually with “Burn again.” It is a kind of aversion for lyrics, we tried for some tracks on the first album Turn Back the Lost Dream but we weren’t satisfied with the results and we removed them, even though the lyrics were fitting the tracks. Eventually the instrumental versions became the one and only versions and we stopped recording vocals all together.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: It is honest, not contrived. For good or for bad, it is emotion based, a depression exorcism. And don’t forget to wear headphones so you can notice some tiny details that might get lost on the speakers.
A: As introduced by the question above, music stimulates in us a visual image that sticks throughout the creational process, or the other way round: we simply starts jamming and a visual image comes as a result. And by visual image we mean not only the physical aspect of it, like a flame, but also the sensation, the emotion that gives us at that point in time. It can make us sad or happy and all the other emotions in between. We find a riff or a chord we like and we expand on it: one guitar answers to the other, we experiment on effects. We often play a lot of songs of the music that we listen to as fun practice, in between our original material, and sometimes we record some of these songs as small bites for social media contained in the “Forgotten Torment Cover.” Covering black metal songs in our style is quite fun. Our music is as introverted and melancholic as our true selves but we also know how to have some amusement.
Q: What was your recording process like? And has it changed over the years? Would you explain some of the tools you use?
A: To keep the truth and the emotional status of the moment, we try to record all in one take. And this has never changed. It is too ambitious considering that a record stays forever and looking back you want to be proud of your work, so there are retakes. One experiment we did was adding, depending on the songs, some hidden guitars tracks that are lowered down so much that are undetectable as individual lines, but if there weren’t there, the sound would feel less full. On some tracks we recorded the solo twice (two variations of the solo) on the same part of the song and overlapped the takes, some distortions or eerie effects are created like this. The guitar always comes first and then we add strings and piano. Not all tracks have strings and piano but the majority do. We made the conscious decision of not using drums but it is not excluded - this decision might change in the future. The first album was an ordeal for self-imposed technical limitations: we recorded it with a looper. For Burn again we upgraded with a Scarlett. The big star of the show is the Jazzmaster, for sure, the nuances in sound that this guitar can give is perfect for our purposes. And then all goes to Garage Band. Home made and low budget give us freedom - time wise and control wise.
Q: How do you usually go about writing lyrics?
A: The only song that has lyrics is “Frost” and it was years we wanted to write a song inspired by Robert Frost’s poetry Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Mission accomplished eventually with “Burn again.” It is a kind of aversion for lyrics, we tried for some tracks on the first album Turn Back the Lost Dream but we weren’t satisfied with the results and we removed them, even though the lyrics were fitting the tracks. Eventually the instrumental versions became the one and only versions and we stopped recording vocals all together.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: It is honest, not contrived. For good or for bad, it is emotion based, a depression exorcism. And don’t forget to wear headphones so you can notice some tiny details that might get lost on the speakers.