To reach the roots of evolution in VII ARCANO sounds and visions, on must be taken back in 1989, when guitar player Roberto Cufaro formed the first band nucleus under the name of Sepolcrum. Sound, intents, attitude and contents were clearly different back then, as the band used to play a deep kind of death/doom, mainly influenced by gothic and dark topics (differently meant as the glammy approach of nowadays…).
With the entering of Marco Montagna as bass player (the only original member, now covering the heavy guitar duties), the band recorded and released two demos: ‘Anteroom Of The Hell’ (1991) and ‘Flowers Upon the Grave’ (1993); the doomy mood of these recordings had been underlined with a new promo tape and the ‘Gather My Blood Forever’ 7” (out in ’94), first releases with new monicker VII ARCANO…The following happenings are commonly seen and conceived by the band members as a new era, a real second chapter concerning both musical style and lyrical approach. With the entering of new definitive singer Mirko Scarpa (from melodic death metal band Omicron), VII ARCANO begin to work on new material, whose earlier result can be heard on the 3 tracks promo cd (a limited release for magazines and labels) out in 1999: a fast, melodic, heavy an mesmerizing kind of death metal, meant to draw the lines of a new musical path and to fully re-write the history of the band.
The time seemed to be right to concentrate on the writing of the whole outfit that should have been the groundings of the 1st full-length album… In 1999 Alex Vicini of underground captor label Warlord Records (Bulldozer, Adramelch, Death SS promotion…) decided to sign the band… but not for the first time the band needed to solve line-up problems, so after separating once again from non-motivated members and joining Gilles Schembri on drums (from prog-death metallers Pilgrim), VII ARCANO entered the Outer Sound Studios (Novembre, Abstracta, Stormlord, Dakrua, Savers…) to record the 10 tracks album (plus Kiss classic tune ‘Love Gun’ as cover for the LP version) ‘Inner Deathscapes’ (featuring cover artwork by Morbid - Dark Funeral, Electric Hellfire Club, Wolfen Society...), a concentrated of powerful and bone-breaking rhythms, razor sharp riffs and lacerating vocals… VII ARCANO era 2000 absolutely take no prisoners, as the band’s evolution has lead the musical pattern through the purest form of extreme metal, taking lymph and vitality from both death and thrash metal machineries resulting as a merciless match between Slayer and At The Gates.
Lyrically speaking, VII ARCANO are a wide open screen on man’s inner decadence, a brutal stand of conscience on our dissolved age, a visual journey through the exalted agony of human race and its extreme responses to living. On the falling of 2001 guitarrist and founding member Roberto Cufaro leaves the band for personal reasons and divergent ideas on the band’s new style. In the same days, the four piece (together with new bass player Mauro Diciocia) enter again the Outer Sound Studios to record two new tracks and a cover for the Bulldozer Armageddon 7’’ tribute collection, proud to hail this marvellous act that contributed to forge the Italian extreme metal scene back in the 80’s. One more aspect not to be forgiven is VII ARCANO live aspect, a pure demonstration of thrashing rage, a lethal dose of furious live metal, proved on stage together with bands as Novembre, Necrodeath, Natron, Handful Of Hate, Behemoth, and more… The first half of 2002 is a very busy part in VII ARCANO History, as the band is working on the new opus (presumpt to be called ‘Nothingod’), with recordings scheduled for the end of the year, but still establishing itself on the live side, mostly on the Italian ground. If ‘Inner Deathscapes’ had its winning point in the heaviness and the power on the tombstone composition, the newer stuff pushes deeper the pedal of aggression and intensity, promising to the most demanding deathbanger an uncompromising fist of deadly speed metal, raw, true, straight and killer as it was meant to be!!!
Source: http://www.viiarcano.com/
