ROCKNATION ISSUE 22 | Page 20

ROCKNATION ISSUE 22 HEAVY STAR Interview by Tom Mathers Hello Heavy Star and welcome to Rocknation. Congrats to your band on having signed to USA label Perris Records. Your CD will be titled ‘Electric Overdrive”. How excited are you to see the fan response to the new CD? Thank you for having us! We put a lot of effort and energy in our debut CD as you can imagine. We are confident that fans of good old rock n’ roll will enjoy this. It is in fact the result of our love for classic hard rock songs of the 80’s and 90’s we’ve always enjoyed. It’s making a kind of a comeback, here in Italy as well as in Northern Europe, even though our sound is definitely more “American”, if you will... Thanks to Perris Records we managed to bring our music to the United States, which is kind of a dream come true. In conclusion, we truly believe in our music, and we hope the fans will too... If you had to tell someone what your band sounded like, what bands would you mention? HEAVY STAR has a definite ‘old school’ vibe to its sound. KISS, Van Halen, Skid Row, Tesla, Y&T, Ratt, W.A.S.P.... Other than that, it goes without saying that we also feel the influence of certain European bands, such as Scorpions, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy and Whitesnake. U.S. Metal rock with a touch of European flair. What known bands have you played with? HEAVY STAR was formed at the end of 2014, but we only started playing live later in 2015, and we did not have the chance to tour outside of Italy, yet. We have shared the stage with historical Italian bands, such as Strana Officina, The Raff, Graal, as well as new talent such as Sick N’ Beautiful, EDEN, Mindcrime, Shock Proof and more. Your band is from Rome, Italy what is the scene like there. Even though our band is from Rome, our singer is actually from Viterbo, a small medieval town about an hour away. We can say that the “scene” in Rome, as well as in the rest of Italy, is evolving – as we see that more and more bands from abroad that play our style of rock have increased touring throughout Italy. Big names such as Scorpions, Kiss, MSG, but also “smaller” acts such The Bullet Boys, WASP, The Quireboys, Hardcore Superstar... Hopefully, we’d love to open for any such band soon! What is some of the music you listen to now? Everyone in the band listens pretty much to the same kind of music we play. Besides the bands we already mentioned, many of which are with Perris Records as well – such as Helix, I would mention a few newer bands that kick major butt, like Eclipse, Beautiful Creatures, Crazy Lixx, Crashdiet, H.E.A.T. thankfully, there’s a lot of good music out there! What plans do you have for 2016? In 2016, we plan to promote “Electric Overdrive” with a small tour that includes Northern Europe, while at the same time recording some of the new songs that are already being written, some of which we already showcase in our live set. Music is all we live for, and to be able to play HEAVY STAR songs live, well... we couldn’t ask for more! Some of us have to play in tribute bands to make ends meet, and believe us – it can be very off busy at times, to say the least. We thank Rocknation for the cool interview – Ciao from HEAVY STAR!