Melodic dark metal band THE MOOR have a couple of releases out and about, an EP as well as a debut album. And according to them they always are working on all new music. What's up next is more music, to be out soon with more to come in the next year too! All of this is discussed and more below.
1. Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.
Well the band is quite unknown in the industry but the story isn’t that short, I’ll try to summarize it the best way. I (Enrico Longhin) was in a band called Bleed In Vain from 2000 to 2008, we had a decent record deal and recorded a couple of albums (one mixed and recorded at Studio Fredman with producer Fredrik Nordström, that is where we first met in 2005).
That was the CDs and MySpace era, we had previous bands before this coming from the tape trade era and this was our first “big” experience as musicians (there’s also an article in our Blog talking about this band and story).
After the split, in 2010 I decided to form The Moor with my great friend Davide Carraro, and the initial plan was to play a sort of melodic hard rock as a project. After a couple of demo songs and rehearsals, we found that we had “under the skin” was more than a level 6 of gain in the guitar amps (haha).
The group evolved into something maybe Opeth-inspired in the beginning, with some Mastodon and Progressive Rock elements (We are huge prog rock fans), so we flew back to Sweden again to mix our first demo EP at Studio Fredman.
In 2012 we signed a deal with progressive rock-heavy metal label Lion Music and we released our first full-length “Year of the Hunger”, which I think it’s still an undiscovered pearl for who might like progressive metal with different facets and contaminations. There are so many ideas in that album, we were very inspired and wanted to show “hey, we like this and this and this” so we were afraid that it was too much an album for very open-minded listeners, even coming from rock and AOR instead of metal. Luckily the result was generally well-received by the press and fans.
Two years later we break the silence with a new single in collaboration with Björn Speed Strid from Soilwork, called The Castaway.
After a sabbatical where everyone involved in the project managed to do life-related and family stuff, in 2018 another great friend, Andrea Livieri substituted Davide on guitars and worked with me almost every day for one year to arrange and compose our sophomore release “Jupiters Immigrants”.
The album is our latest full length and it has been mixed always by Fredrik Nordström at Studio Fredman. This album was baptized as Dark Progressive Metal and for the first time we also took care of more electronic elements on our music, which in the beginning was made by an actual keyboarder, Gilles, but then I realized I was just too pity on tweaking things up and from that time I started to study synths and keyboards to tailor the arrangements my own way.
This year we released two singles, “Wrath of Vultures” and “Emissaries”, which explores new “obscure” and “dark” horizons, let’s say that these are maybe the darkest songs I ever wrote.
2. What’s the origin of the band’s name?
Well actually yes a sort of, the main intuition was to have something short and simple, so I was listening to one of my favorite songs from Opeth (The Moor) and realized that there’s The Moor of Venice, the Tragedy of Othello, which is our hometown (well we are all based in the countryside), and then The Moor is intended also as Moorland, in Italian it’s“brughiera, which is a common landscape on the Prealps here in the northern regions.
3. Where is the band based out of and what is your music scene like there? Are there any local bands you could recommend?
The band is based in northern Italy, Veneto region, near Venice. The scene is pretty intense while there aren’t that much venues or small clubs, but the few ones are great.
There are a lot of great bands, and it’s difficult to name all of them, I can mention Shading, Give Us Barabba, The Silence Between Us, Ishvara, Ensoph (no more active). I see that there’s a playlist dedicated to this region called “Veneto Metal” on Spotify.
4. How would you describe your style?
We agree with some press that define us a “Dark Progressive Metal” band, but some songs can find their place under the Melodic Death Metal label as well.
5. What have you released so far and what can someone expect from your works?
This is pretty covered by my first answer, but I can say in fewer words that we released our first EP in 2010 (then re-released in 2012 by Lion Music), then our first full length “Year of the Hunger” always in 2012.
Our single “The Castaway”, featuring Björn from Soilwork was released in 2014. Then we stopped for a few years and then came back with our sophomore second album “Jupiter’s Immigrants” in 2018.
This year we are back with the new singles “Emissaries” and “Wrath of Vultures”
6. Do you have any new music in the works?
Of course, we always have.
7. How about playing shows and touring, have anything planned out?
Not yet, everything stopped with the pandemic, but we have never been an intense touring or live act.
8. What plans do you have for the future as a band?
Releasing new music soon, maybe another single, and hopefully releasing a new album in 2022.
I decided that the next steps would have been releasing more singles to bring more people in and staying more in touch with new listeners.
Let’s say we want to live the band in a different way than just releasing 9 or 12 songs and then stop for two years or even four.
9. Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?
You can find everything on our official website www.themoor.org , which contains also our official merch store and all our albums. Of course we are on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and Amazon as well, follow us there as well.
10. What is it you’d like a listener to remember the most when hearing your music for the first time?
Open your mind and enjoy! You will find a lot of influences and different landscapes… and of course a lot of headbanging stuff. Thanks NW!
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