written by Marko Jakob
Pix666: Hello Angela. Thanks for your time. How are you doing these days, are you alive and well? How are the other guys of Secret Rule?
Angela: Hi Pix666, you’re welcome 🙂 I’m pretty good and my bandmates are fine too. We keep facing these hard times in the best way possible.
Pix666: Please introduce your band to the readers in a few short sentences. How did you meet and how did you come up with your band name? What was your inspiration to become a musician? What kind of music does Secret Rule make?
Angela: All difficult questions LOL
At the end of 2013, Andy called me to propose a new project and since my band at that time had just decided to disband, I accepted his offer.
The rhythmic session was formed by two old friends of Andy’s, Michele Raspanti and Maurizio (after a few months he left the band and Ruben joined us, the first official Secret Rule drummer). The “Secret Rule” name was born from the concept we had in mind when we wrote our first album “Transposed Emotions”.
Now something about me, music has always been inside me since I was a child. I started with Italian pop, then rock, and at the end around my twenties I got to know the metal genre and I fell in love with it.
It’s difficult to define our music, album after album, we have kept our sound but we have lived in constant evolution. For sure we’re a metal band, with very catchy melodies, electronic inserts, and lots of groove!
Pix666: You’ve been on the road with Secret Rule for a few years now. What have been the best experiences and milestones so far?
Angela: The Secret Rule journey has moved forward for almost 8 years now, 7 albums released, we have toured across Europe, we have a solid fan base. It’s difficult to identify particular milestones because every experience has enriched us. Surely the best milestone we have reached until now is to survive in this difficult music industry with only our strength and to be here still having a lot of things to say through our music.
Pix666: Some months ago your third single from the new album ‘Mea Culpa’ was released. What were the main differences of the album production due to the restrictions of Corona compared to other productions under normal conditions?
Angela: Actually, regarding the production of the latest album nothing changed, we had more time to work on it,(since we do everything by ourselves), and Andy took care of the recording sessions, mixing, and mastering with his studio “Digitall Studio” “https://www.facebook.com/digitallstudiomusic, so we didn’t have problems.
What changed this year is the way we’re releasing our album. Since all our tours have been postponed and we can’t foresee when we will be back on the road, we thought to release our new album “Mea Culpa” digitally with one song per month (more or less) to entertain our fans during all of 2021. Physically the album was released on June 3rd through our Official Webshop, so if someone is really curious, they can listen to all the songs by buying our album there. We have released four singles/music videos up till now, the latest one is “Born This Way” released on the same date as the album.
Pix666: How do you generally create your songs? Is there a certain plan? Who in the band is responsible for what?
Angela: Usually, I write the lyrics and vocal lines and Andy takes care of the general arrangements. Then Mike and Sebastiano define all the other details with their instruments. As far as the composing method, I constantly keep recording ideas on my phone and I send these ideas to Andy. At the same time, Andy writes music and riffs sending me his ideas. This is something we do all over the time; this is also the reason we can release an album every year. Anyway, when we have enough material, we start selecting the best ideas to put together an album.
Pix666: You have also released new video clips. There have already been around 100,000 views on YouTube. How were the fans’ reactions to the new songs and videos? Do you know in which countries Secret Rule is listened most?
Angela: Yes, it seems our new music videos and songs are receiving a positive response and we’re happy about that. Also because of the topics we spoke about. We always try to insert important messages and people have appreciated our lyrics. One of the first countries to listen to us on digital platforms is the USA and it’s incredible considering we have never toured there. Then we have Germany, England, Sweden, Finland…and so on.
Pix666: On June 3rd your new album ‘Mea Culpa’ was released. What can the fans expect on the album? In which versions can the fans buy your album, and above all, where?
Angela: The pre-order started on March 16th and we closed it on May 30th.
And we wanna thank all those who supported us by buying one of the special bundles we created for them. Now the album and the official t-shirt are available on our official webshop here:
https://www.secretrule.it/product-category/mea-culpa-new-merch/
As I mentioned before, we’re going to release a song more or less every 40 days on all digital platforms. So, the whole album will be digitally revealed month after month until December.
This album is more emotional and intimate compared with the previous one, and it touches delicate topics such as the situation of our planet, respect for all people regardless of their skin color, or sexual orientation, or disability. There are a few songs that explore different states of mind, where people can recognize themselves. We’re really satisfied with this album.
Pix666: The pandemic unfortunately still has us in its grip. You had to postpone your concerts/tour again. Describe that feeling when you’re already sitting on packed suitcases and the concerts are cancelled.
Angela: It’s difficult to express our feelings because we had released our previous album “Against” just a month before the pandemic started and we looked forward to playing all the new songs live. So, we were really disappointed even if we would never have thought this situation would be last so long. So, we tried to react to this really strange situation by releasing a cover album “Quarantine: the other side of us” in April 2020, to keep us busy and to give something to our fans. The album had a such great positive response that we decided to also release three music videos. A couple of months ago we released the fourth music video for the cover song “the Swan Song” by Within Temptation.
Here all our cover songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch/SecretRule/Covers
Waiting for better times, on June 19th we’ll play an acoustic live streaming event playing all the songs off the new album “Mea Culpa”, the show will be available for 8 days to give everyone the opportunity to watch it.
Here are all the details: https://viewstub.com/Secret-Rule-Naked-acoustic-live-streaming
We’re really excited about it because we have never played an acoustic show and we had to rearrange all our songs considering also a piano. It was fantastic and we look forward to sharing this experience with our fans 🙂
Pix666: How important are live performances for Secret Rule and how big are the financial losses for your band due to the Corona Pandemic?
Angela: We believe in live performances because we think it the only way to be close to our fans. It’s fantastic to share the energy with them, to meet them after a show. We think it’s the vital lymph for a band. Just like all bands, we had financial losses because we couldn’t promote our new album “Against” and we lost all sales we usually get on tour. A lot of people lost their jobs, fought depression and psychological problems increased because it’s not simple to cut off all human contact. So, we tried to understand this situation more in-depth and for this reason, we have tried to go forward with our strength-giving everything possible to our fans avoid platforms like Patreon and similar, but giving them as much content as we can, for free. At the moment we are resisting.
Pix666: How big is the support from the fans? Do people buy more merch than usual? What do you actually have on offer in the shop?
Angela: We love our fans and the most loyal ones have supported us as always and we’ll never stop thanking them. But unfortunately, most people are a bit lazy and often people prefer to support bigger bands, so it’s always hard to survive in this jungle. As I told you, we try to keep moving forward with our forces. For this album, we did a pre-sale with different bundles that included an HQ photobook (more than 50 full colors pages), T-shirts, a unique DVD with us in action playing the new songs, and obviously the CD. Now in our webshop, you can find all our discography with special offers if you buy more than 3 CDs, all the Official t-shirts and other new things are coming!
Pix666: What is the current situation in Italy and especially the mood among the people?
Angela: Things are going better, a lot of people have gotten their vaccine, we have fewer restrictions so the mood is better than some months ago. People are thinking about their holidays already 😀 We really hope this situation is returning to normal even if it seems like we’ll still have to live with vaccines and some restrictions for some years 🙁
Pix666: As a musician, you certainly spend most of your time creating music – but what else do you do in your free time when you want to get your mind off things – are there any interesting hobbies that you pursue?
Angela: Actually, all of us have a full-time job to pay the rent, to support our lives and families. So, all our free time is for Secret Rule including our days off to have rehearsals, tours and to manage everything. There’s hard work behind it all. It’s not only the writing of new songs but also the management of all our social media, our webshop, the merch shipping, the content creation, it’s a constant work in progress! Personally, I have different hobbies like reading comics, playing video games, and drawing but since the Secret Rule formed, I definitely have less time to spend on my hobbies.
Pix666: So you have another, “normal” job? What do you work as?
Angela: Yes, my normal job is selling ITC services for a big telecommunications company in Italy. So, I have my customers that are companies of every genre and I support them in their businesses, offering innovative services. I constantly take courses to be updated on all the new technologies. It’s an interesting job even if I would like to be a full-time musician. But the music industry is not simple and it’s difficult to survive on it alone. Anyway, this is my life and I try to do my best 🙂
Pix666: Do you have any other news, that you would like to share with the fans?
Angela: I want to underline again our appointment on June 19th at 6 pm (CEST) for our acoustic live streaming show called “Naked” where we’ll present the whole new album “Mea Culpa”. With us, there will be a friend of ours, Nicola Pedron, playing the piano and after the première we’ll be in chat with our fans and we’ll be available to answer their questions. It’s important to remind you that the show will be available for 8 days to give everyone the chance to watch it.
Here are all the details: https://viewstub.com/Secret-Rule-Naked-acoustic-live-streaming
We’ll be waiting for you!!
Pix666: Thank you very much for the interesting answers – Good luck with the new album and stay healthy!!!
Angela: Thank you for this space and your interest in Secret Rule. It was a pleasure to answer your questions. Stay safe and good health to everyone!
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