I interviewed DYRNWYN

Five years after their first EP, the Italian band DYRNWYN released their debut album on October 24th. So, I interviewed the band to learn more about 😊

01. Hi guys ! First of all, can you tell me how was founded the band ?

The band formed in fall 2012, by Ivan Cenerini and Ivan Coppola, who love the Pagan Folk Metal genre. When the first guitarist Mauro Ricotta joined the band, we’ve started to write the first songs.

02. What does that band name mean to you ?

Choosing the name was taking away too much time, at first we weren’t even sure what topics we would have been talking about, so we have decided for a name that could please all of us. 

Dyrnwyn is a mythical Celtic sword, one of the 13 Britain treasures. Many people link this sword to Excalibur and King Arthur

3/ The beginning of the band seemed difficult within a non-established line-up. How did you face it for shows and the whole ?

As every band does, we have faced some complications like choosing the themes to talk about and  facing some line-up changes, but we could record the demo and the EP without problems anyway. 

On the other side these changes slowed us down as regards writing the album and organizing live concerts. Even so, we have decided to not rush the writing process and to wait the right people to join the band.

Right now we have a solid line-up and we hope it will last as long as possible. 

04. You recently released your debut album titled « Sic Transit Gloria Mundi », what is it about ? 

« Sic Transit Gloria Mundi » talks about events and culture of the first part of the Roman Republic. There are songs about the war between Rome and Veio like « Para Bellum », « Il Sangue dei Vinti », « Assedio di Veio » but we talk also about the roman culture in songs like « Cerus », the roman god also known as Giano and « Feralia », a roman holiday dedicated to the dead people.  

05. Have you already got positive feedback for that album ?

Yes, definitely ! There are a lot of reviews being published every week, and the reviewers are appreciating « Sic Transit Gloria Mundi » a lot. We’re glad to read them ! 

Of course also the feedbacks of our fans are very positive. We read every day messages and comments of people that are loving our album, and this is probably the most important thing in our work : who listens and loves what you’ve written, played and recorded.

06. How did the things happen in the studio ? Was it one good experience ?

The studio experience was great, intense and rewarding. Alessio Cattaneo and Riccardo Studer from Time Collapse Recording Studio are real professionals and we enjoyed working with them. Sometimes they also gave us suggestions to make things sound even better, and we are really satisfied of their job. 

Working in the studio is a positive experience because it's the moment that turns all your efforts, passion and hard work in something real and complete, which sounds in a certain way, that expresses your sound, themes that you are fond to and so on...

07. How does it work, composing music and lyrics at Dyrnwyn ?

For the demo « Fatherland » we just liked making music by choosing different themes that we liked. We singed in english language as well ! For the EP « Ad Memoriam » we changed our approach : we have started choosing themes from the Roman history and writing songs about them. This method has remained almost the same for our Album « Sic Transit Gloria Mundi » : here we have focused ourselves on a limited period of the Roman history – that is the first part, the Roman Republic.  We decided a single theme and what the lyrics would have been talking about and then we started working on the music : we knew what the songs were about, so we wrote a music that could perfectly fit the lyrics. 

08. Do you have an upcoming tour ? Share the dates!

We are still working on this : we’re contacting many festivals and we are still waiting some answers. As soon as we will have the dates we will share them !

09. What are your next plans ?

We don’t want to stop and we hope to start working on new material in the next year. At least, we would like to define the structure of the new album and we don’t want to leave much time go by before writing new stuff. 

Of course we are now much more focused on our dates and we hope to play « Sic Transit Gloria Mundi » around Italy and Europe ! As we already said, we will share our dates as soon as they will be available !

Thank you, folks !