Perseo: Lunocode band started in 2004 under the name “Anima” and it was founded by Perseo Mazzoni (me), Paride Mazzoni, Francesco Rossi and Giordano Boncompagni. We started just for fun but with the idea that, when we had reached a good balance between us, we had started writing original songs…and so it has been! In 2007 we released a demo cd, called “Birth”, in 2009 we started the recording sessions of “Last Day of the Earth”…and here we are! Nowadays we have great and ambitious projects and we’re striving to get all of them realized. We changed our monicker Anima a few months ago because we wanted a name that really was unique (Anima is a very common band name..try searching youtube or google..) and we found this wordplay, “Lunocode”, referred to the “Lunokhod”, the first radio controlled vehicle to ever land on the moon and to explore it. For originality’s sake, we concatenated “Luno” from “Lunokhod” with “code” and we got our actual monicker “Lunocode”. It sounded good to us and we choose it!

Perseo: There are several different influences in the band. We all like metal but we also like rock music and pop, film soundtracks and even classical music. Bands like Dream Theater or Stratovarius had a great influences over us in the past but today we try to be more personal in making our songs and we get influences from barely everything we get in contact with. Metal and Rock are our biggest influences, in any case.

Perseo: Basically we try to do what we like and we try to do it the best we can. Today we are going a step forward on the progressive path with the new songs we are composing for our next full length album. We’re trying to be more personal and we’re trying to break schemes or preconceptions (essentially “thoughts patterns”) we could instinctively have or we could have developed during the past years: we try to write songs that actually can bring out the true personalities of each band member, merging all we are into our music and hoping that, doing so, the result will be something with a “soul” by itself. Power metal scene is heavily populated but I think that every genre of music is heavily populated today: the world is full of bands and, just as a rule of thumb, not all of them can be innovative. We try to do our best to follow our attitudes and not to copy someone but we can’t “force” ourselves to do something we don’t want to do just to be “innovative”: we follow our personalities and we hope that our audience will enjoy our music!

Perseo: Yes, the “Last Day of the Earth” EP has a conceptual nature. The entire album is the story of a person who is forced to watch at the world with now disillusioned eyes by some tragic events that destroyed his convictions and his former view of the world. Through this journey, the child becomes a man (or a woman, of course) and develops a new image of the whole, without the need to have faith in myths or religions of any sort. He’s just taking his life in his hand, the Universe on the other hand and, watching at them, he’s discovering that Life, Universe, our world, our passions, our atoms, our emotions…everything is just part of the cycle of creation, destruction and re-creation. It’s all a part of a symphony that takes matter or energy and shapes them in different and ever-changing forms, like a wave on the surface of the sea is actually made of water but takes infinite forms and has its exact life-cycle before returning to the ocean, merging again with other waves and creating, with its brief existence, the beautiful image of a troubled and powerful sea. Humankind has always tried to find the meaning of pain and has always tried to get this meaning out of religion or myths. Nowadays, scientists try to trace down the origin of the Universe with the help of Science. Great scientists of the past (and of the present) always had a certain spiritual feeling about the Universe: Einstein did, Stephen Hawking do, Fred Hoyle, Carl Sagan and many others did as well. They’re atheist but they had that feeling: in Last Day of the Earth I tried to communicate that Science is for sure our light in the dark, the instrument by which man can achieve a superior level of knowledge and can work to destroy walls that actually divide us, it’s a great tool to help poor countries or to fight diseases all over the world but, as great scientists has also those spiritual feelings (that helped them fight so much to explore the limit of human knowledge with all that passion and determination), everyone should have those feelings as well, to carry on the best they can. We’re all (humans, animals, plants or stones) the same grain of sand in the same hourglass and we can get real power only if we learn to respect and help each other, using our intelligence to make great things and not to divide ourselves. Death also, in this new view of the Universe, is now seen as a necessity: Universe must continue his dance and our atoms, as well as our energy, are not really our own but they must return to the world to collaborate in creating new “waves” on the cosmic ocean. So we’re not really lost when we die, our energy continues its journey through the Cosmos…that’s actually my definition for “immortality”. When I think at it I feel peaceful and calm. We’re all dancing with the Cosmos. We’re dancing in the Cosmos, with the Cosmos and for the Cosmos. That’s what “Last Day of the Earth” concept is about.

Perseo: Cecilia left the band months ago, basically when we got the contract with Spider Rock Promotion. In December 2010 we got in touch with Daphne as we were searching for a good singer, not a replacement. We like Daphne’s attitude to interpretation and her attention to details: she’s a smart girl and the work for the new releases is proceeding well. Our future releases will be different from Last Day of the Earth because they will be far less power metal oriented and far (hopefully) more on the progressive side. This will be reflected, vocally, with less extreme-on-high-pitch notes, more interpretation and feeling and more personal melodies.

Perseo: No, our first full length album will be, as I said before, something different from Last Day. We like to experiment new arrangements and new songwriting methods: we always try to avoid doing two times the same thing. In our next full length album we will be experimenting different song structures, different song atmospheres (here more dark, there more brilliant or more calm and relaxing) and different solutions. We can’t tell you when our first full length album will be out but we can tell you that, as said album is an ambitious work, we are preparing a second EP and we will release it somewhere in 2011 to fill in the time we have to dedicato to the LP…So stay connected!

Daphne: Digital media, file sharing, and music piracy are the weapons that people use to know the greater quantity of music is possible, in spite of the costs it would involve. Some of this elements are not legal, but we can consider that digital media in general allow to enlarge the range of public: on the web you can find videos and free samples that give the possibility to reach more music, to have more choice and to extend your musical culture…if it doesn’t become musical bulimia… It’s really hard for coming bands, we have to say it…but it must be also a stimulation to research an higher level of originality, to pay more attention to details and peculiarities. You must try to make the difference, or you’ll go by unobserved in this vast magma of musical offer. Of course, we hope people would buy our works, but we are enough realistic to know that not everyone will do it (initially…  ). Perhaps, the way to face this situation is to do our best, to contain, as it’s possible, the cost of CDs and to do more live activity.

Perseo & Daphne: Our current ambitions are basically to promote our first EP, “Last Day of the Earth”, as it’s the result of many and many hours of hard work in our studio, to publish our first LP album somewhere in 2012 (hope Mayas are wrong…) and to publish another EP during 2011, presumably winter…and obviously to promote all of those CDs as well! We’d like to tour Italy and maybe Europe but there aren’t plans to do this in the immediate as we’re focusing on studio work. Finally, I wish to thank all metal-reviews.com readers and I wish to thank all our fans and all the people that actually bought our first EP and enjoyed it: we’re very glad you’re a so large family! I hope you all will stay connected with us through our internet profiles (we’re on Facebook, MySpace, ReverbNation, Last.FM, Twitter and so on)…just google for “Lunocode” and you will be able to find our official internet site (www.lunocode.com) where you’ll find all the links you need to follow us or to buy our CDs or merchandise! Thank you again to you all! Ciao ciao from Italy!