The Diabolic Obsession interview

1. Hi! You describe The Diabolic Obsession as an artistic entity rather than a band. Was that distinction important from the beginning, or did it become clear while you were making Tier Drama?

Hi. The Diabolic Obsession is indeed not a band, but something born from the will and work of a single person: Diabolic Obsession.

The world behind this project first took musical form because, for me, it was the most natural way to give substance to the images and impressions that belong to its essence. But I don’t believe it necessarily has to exist only through music: it can take other forms, as has already happened with the video for The Red House or the photo shoot created for Tier Drama.

It is therefore a project that tends to manifest itself through different forms of expression, depending on what it needs to evoke. This is why I prefer to describe it as an artistic entity, rather than simply as a musical project, a one-man band, or the work of a composer in the more traditional sense of the term.

2. You were active in the Italian extreme-metal underground in the 1990s. Then almost thirty years without discographic activity. That's a hell of a gap. What made you want to return now?

In 2000, I completely gave up being a musician. Within a few days, I sold all my equipment and started attending Electro Gothic and Dark clubs, where I soon became involved with music again as a DJ. It is something I still do today, although now only on a rather marginal basis.

I don’t think I ever completely abandoned the need to express myself artistically, nor that darker side that had always accompanied me. For many years, it simply found other forms.

Towards the end of 2020, also thanks to the inspiration my partner was able to give me, I decided to buy a bass again. From that moment, very slowly, a new creative process began, one that would eventually lead me back to composing and, several years later, to Tier Drama.

There was never a real plan to “come back.” I simply followed what was beginning to resurface, without rushing and according to the pace of my own life.

3. And when you came back, did you find the underground you remembered, or did it feel like walking into a completely different place?

I think many things have changed compared to the 1990s, even though some of the people who were part of that scene are still active today. My impression is that the human side has become less spontaneously collaborative, although that is probably also a consequence of how everything surrounding music has changed.

Back then, collaboration between bands, fanzines, distributors and people within the scene was almost essential. Today, technology allows a project to operate, produce music and communicate much more independently, so inevitably some of those relationships have lost part of their original function.

After all, I came back on my own, immersed in my own world, after almost thirty years. I certainly could not expect anything to have remained there waiting for me. I simply accepted that reality had changed, and I am trying to understand it without too much nostalgia.

4. You specifically say this isn't a nostalgia project or a revival. Fair enough. But when someone has been away from extreme metal for nearly three decades, the past is going to be somewhere in the room whether you invite it in or not. Where do you hear your 1990s self on Tier Drama?

Your observation is absolutely right. I don’t reject anything from my past and, deep down, my 1990s self is still there, perhaps with a little more maturity and a few more scars.

But the music I make today also contains my 2000s self, influenced by other genres, other things I listened to, and everything that came afterwards. That is why I don’t see Tier Drama as a nostalgic return to my roots, but rather as the result of different experiences and different backgrounds that have gradually overlapped over time.

I like to think of it as an evolution. But if I haven’t actually managed that, I certainly won’t lose any sleep over it.

5. The project is described as “Occult Horror Metal”, but the music apparently avoids a lot of the usual modern black-metal vocabulary. Was that a conscious reaction against the genre, or did those sounds simply never interest you?

It isn’t a reaction against the genre, which I don’t follow particularly closely anyway. It is simply my natural way of making music and of interpreting the images I have in mind.

The resulting sound also came about spontaneously, without any need to chase particular clichés or already codified musical languages.

In my head, Tier Drama had to sound this way.

6. Each song is supposed to have its own beginning, development and conclusion. Did you approach the four tracks almost like four short horror stories, or is there a connection between them that only becomes visible after hearing the whole EP?

As you rightly point out, each song is a self-contained story, with its own beginning, development and conclusion. The starting points may come from legends, stories or people who actually existed, often disturbing or controversial figures, but that is only where the process begins.

From there, the story takes its own direction and turns into something personal, almost like a parallel dimension alongside the original source. And, of course, it almost never leads to a happy ending.

The four stories are nevertheless connected by something deeper: that primordial, wild and animalistic component that I believe exists in every human being. When it takes over, what remains can become a fascinating compendium of aberration.

7. “The Red House” is inspired by the legends around Villa De Vecchi. Why that particular place? What did you find there that you couldn't get from simply inventing a haunted house?

My partner and I visited Villa De Vecchi, known as the Red House, in Bindo di Cortenova, Valsassina, in September 2024. It was simply an urban exploration, but inevitably I also looked into the many legends that had grown up around the place.

Among them is the story, never confirmed and unsupported by documentary evidence, of a supposed visit or stay by Aleister Crowley at the villa. That single suggestion was enough. Having actually been there, having seen the rooms and personally experienced the atmosphere, gave me something that a completely invented haunted house probably would not have had.

From there, the story took on a completely independent direction: the chance encounter between a woman and a corrupt Magus, accompanied by his female adepts. I should make it clear, however, that the Magus in The Red House is not Aleister Crowley.

8. The story then moves from a woman looking for shelter to an imposed transformation that she eventually accepts as liberation. That's a pretty nasty idea - being manipulated until you start believing your own destruction is freedom. Why was that important to the story?

I would speak more of transformation than destruction. The Magus’s manipulation and deception lead the protagonist, initially unaware of what is happening, into a corrupted ritual that takes some elements from the Gnostic Mass. Through this process, modesty and shame are transformed into power, while dogmas are gradually dissolved through carnality.

It is an induced inversion, not a spontaneous one. But what the Magus sets in motion ultimately leads the protagonist to become aware of a power she did not previously know, and which, at a certain point, is no longer under his control.

That power, however, does not absolve the Magus, nor does it retroactively justify the coercion, manipulation or deception that brought her to that point. What she becomes is the consequence of the transformation, not a justification for what was done to her. And in fact, the ritual does not lead to a happy ending for him either.

The story is not meant to propose a moral lesson, an ethic to follow, or any particular philosophical or esoteric belief. As with the other songs on Tier Drama, it simply tells what can happen when human will takes on a bestial form.

9. Andy LaRocque plays the lead guitar solo on “The Red House”. How did that collaboration happen, and what made you want that particular guitar voice inside The Diabolic Obsession?

Andy LaRocque has always been one of my favourite guitarists, because of his sound, feeling and technique.

When I composed The Red House, his way of playing was exactly what I had in mind for that part of the song. It was essentially a professional collaboration, and there was no need to explain in detail what kind of solo I was looking for.

Andy simply found the mood of the song, and from the very first listen I thought it had to be exactly that way. To me, that is professionalism, plain and simple.

10. “Adeline” deals with manipulation and psychological annihilation, with the victim eventually internalizing the control even after the bokor is dead. You describe this as being inspired by a real story. How much do you change when you take something real and push it into horror fiction?

How much I change depends on the story. In the case of Adeline, probably less than in the other three songs.

Adeline D. is a Haitian woman whose case was studied and documented by the French anthropologist and forensic physician Philippe Charlier as part of his research into zombification in Haiti. Her case is particularly disturbing because, behind the imagery of the zombie, something much more real emerges: the loss of identity, submission, and a form of social death that can leave deep consequences even when the person returns to their former existence.

Even here, though, reality is only the starting point. I took the liberty of altering certain events and introducing details that do not belong to Charlier’s documentation, allowing the story to enter the territory of The Diabolic Obsession.

So I can stay quite close to the documented core of a real case, while freely changing what surrounds it when the story requires it. For me, that is precisely where reality and horror begin to blur. I am writing a story, not an anthropological account.

11. Then there's “Mother Rasputin”, which deals with a religious authority turning faith into an instrument of guilt and domination. You use an actual historical figure as the starting point. What interested you more - the historical person, or the mechanism by which people surrender themselves to someone else's authority?

What interested me most was the mechanism by which people can surrender their own will to an authority. Mariam Soulakiotis was the historical figure that gave me a concrete starting point for exploring that idea.

Mother Rasputin was the nickname used by the press for Soulakiotis, a Greek Old Calendarist abbess who became notorious for a series of crimes committed within her own community, including murders, fraud and violence against her followers.

She is certainly a disturbing figure, but what fascinates me even more is how religion, superstition and the need to believe can become extremely effective tools when someone decides to use them for personal power. Dogma is then turned upside down and used against the very people who placed their trust in it.

That is the aspect I wanted to push further in the song: when a rule is accepted as absolute, whoever claims the right to interpret or represent it may find a victim already predisposed to obedience.

The story of Mother Rasputin then takes all of this into the territory of The Diabolic Obsession. The character’s sadism and perversion are exaggerated with complete narrative freedom: I begin with the historical figure, but what happens in the song belongs to my story, not to a biographical reconstruction.

12. “Testament in Decay” is loosely inspired by Crowley's fiction, but you reversed the narrative perspective. Why reverse it? What changes when the same basic idea is seen from the other side?

Testament in Decay is inspired by The Testament of Magdalen Blair, a disturbing short story by Aleister Crowley published in 1913. Magdalen is a woman with the ability to read minds and, as her scientist husband approaches death, the connection between them draws her ever deeper into the sensations and thoughts surrounding his agony and decay.

In Crowley’s story, Magdalen is the narrator. In Testament in Decay, I wanted to reverse that perspective and place myself on the side of the dying man, imagining myself on a deathbed, stripped of any psychic protection and aware that someone else can penetrate the darkest parts of my mind and even experience the sensations of my decomposing body.

Changing the point of view also changes the nature of the horror: I am no longer the one witnessing the visions, but the one involuntarily producing and transmitting them. What is perceived on the other side becomes so horrifying that the person condemned to come into contact with those thoughts is driven to suicide.

The most disturbing thing is that there is no intention to cause harm. An emotional bond protects no one; on the contrary, it can become the channel through which something intimate and terrible passes from one person to another.

13. The official “The Red House” video was filmed in an abandoned church and continues the story rather than functioning as a normal performance video. Do you think a song like this needs images to complete it, or should the music be able to create the whole place on its own?

My songs tend to take shape in my head almost like short films. That is simply part of the way I write.

I scripted and planned the video for The Red House in detail, almost as if I were staging the song as a piece of theatre, with the music acting as its soundtrack.

I do think the music should be able to create the atmosphere and the setting on its own. At the same time, I find it very stimulating to give the same story another life through images, video, or other artistic forms.

In a way, this brings us back to the first question: The Diabolic Obsession was never meant to exist only as a musical project, but as something that can take on different forms.

14. One last thing about the title: why “Tier Drama”? What does those two words mean inside the world of The Diabolic Obsession?

For me, Tier Drama refers to the moment when the animal side of the human being comes to the surface and begins to take control. That is the thread running through all four songs on the EP.

The title is inspired by Das Tierdrama, a ritual described by Anton LaVey in The Satanic Rituals and attributed by him to the Bavarian Illuminati, although that origin is not historically documented.

In the ritual, the participants voluntarily undergo a symbolic regression to their animal nature, briefly leaving behind the construct of civilized man in order to reconnect with something more instinctive and ancestral.

What fascinated me was that idea of stripping away the civilized layer. But, as often happens in the world of The Diabolic Obsession, something goes wrong with the ritual’s liberating intention. The beast that emerges is not necessarily any purer than the human being who set it free.

15. And finally, because you insist on keeping the person behind the project anonymous, if The Diabolic Obsession itself could answer one question about its creator, what would you absolutely not want it to tell us?

When I write music and build the stories around it, I am Diabolic Obsession, an entity separate from and independent of my real identity. For that reason, I feel no need to reveal who I am outside the project: what matters is what belongs to The Diabolic Obsession, not the person who exists beyond it.

There are also secondary layers of meaning within my songs, much more personal elements that often exist even before I choose a particular story, legend or historical figure. In some cases, those initial suggestions are precisely what lead me to search for the theme through which the song eventually takes shape.

Those hidden keys belong to the most private part of The Diabolic Obsession.

And those are probably what Diabolic Obsession would never reveal about its creator.

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