Dark Quarterer - Biography
Logos
2015-
1989-
Biography
The original group was formed in 1974 in Piombino and was called "Omega erre". Eight years of playing cover followed with no concerts or performances, but a continuous effort to capture the sounds and colours of the hard and progressive rock of those years. It was an absolute imperative for the band to reproduce the songs faithfully - they played dozens of covers of Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Krokus, Grand Funk Railroad, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Gentle Giant, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Van Der Graaf Generator, Deep Purple, Ten Years After, Cream, Manowar, Michael Shenker, Colosseum?
After hearing the band in rehearsal, Duccio Marchi, a great friend and keen fan of avant garde Rock, suggested they compose something completely new. The group thought about its degree of musical development and its capacity to create something both inspired by all the music already heard but that would be really different from everything.
It seemed impossible to realise anything truly original. If it hadn't been for the continual insistence of Duccio Marchi perhaps Dark Quarterer would never have existed!
Their first composition was too light-weight harmonically and too commercial, boring even on first hearing... Fulberto Serena experimented with classical sonorities (Bach), arpeggios that were also veritable riffs, almost exclusively in the minor aiming to achieve the darkest colour possible. On top of this, the name "Omega erre" as it stood suggested nothing good.
The name Dark Quarterer was Duccio's inspiration - he explained that "quarterer" was old English for the butcher of slaughtered animals. The "Logo" that identifies Dark Quarterer was the result of a more general idea of the group and has appeared since the first disc: a virtual trade mark!
The "new-born" Dark Quarterer started to produce their first musical sketches: Fulberto Serena brought ideas, themes, melodies and the group slowly transformed it all into definitive versions of the songs. Duccio also contributed to the final result demolishing all the musical choices that did not seem good to his ear like the worst critic. So it took a lot of instinct but also many corrections and radical changes in order to achieve a final result that could not be improved upon. Only when everyone firmly believed in it was the result considered definitive. The introverted and moody personality of Fulberto contributed to disturbing pieces like the self-titled Dark Quarterer, The Entity, Gates of Hell, in which the protagonist actually wanted to live and die in the name of evil to dethrone Lucifer in the underworld! The themes of Gianni Nepi's lyrics were anyway always inspired by Fulberto Serena. Paolo Ninci's role at the time was exclusively as percussionist. The arrangements were however the result of group collaboration.
The first reviews spoke of a masterpiece and of the creation of a new musical style "Epic progressive" (Cubito Claudio - Rockerilla 1987). About a year later the group was contacted by Giorgio Mangora who proposed the production of a second album. The songs had already been created in part and the guarantee of production gave the group the necessary stimulus to complete the work. "THE ETRUSCAN PROPHECY" was released in 1989 and included songs like "ANGELS OF MIRE" and "ETRUSCAN PROPHECY" itself, but just when it seemed that the group was finally taking off (the second album was enthusiastically reviewed by the chief editor of the German magazine METAL HAMMER, which spoke of DQ as the only Italian group composing real heavy metal and it was distributed in Germany by SEMAPHORE), the group's guitar player had an identity crisis and left the group for no plausible reason. His state of crisis lasted for some years and the search for a new player with the charisma and professional qualities of Fulberto was a real challenge.
In 1991 Sandro Tersetti accepted an offer to join the group. The style of this blues guitarist of the Blackmoore (Deep Purple) school was very different from that of the group which was much closer to that of Black Sabbath, with its dark harmonies - the search for something which could combine such contrasting styles proved very long. In 1991, with a piece that was very Led Zeppelin and almost as a bet, the group took part in the "Festival degli Sconosciuti di Ariccia" sponsored by Rita Pavone. It won the group section with OUT OF LINE and took part in the TV program on RAIDUE playing the piece live.
The following year the group was contacted by the German INLINE MUSIC (Accept) who offered the band a co-production. So in 1995 WAR TEARS was released on compact disc. The sound was stunning and the quality of the recording perfect but the group hadn't yet re-established its identity - in fact commercial hits like OUT OF LINE were mixed with Black Sabbath inspired pieces like NIGHTMARE. Paolo Ninci in a first composition created an inspired melody which was used in embryonic form in the opening track IN THE BEGINNING but was then taken up again more fully in the epic song LAST BREATH in the group's latest production "VIOLENCE". It was Gianni Nepi who had the tough job of composing most of the music and all the lyrics. Sandro Tersetti acted as composer only in providing the harmonies for A PRAY FOR MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA and in contributing a really melting arpeggio over which Gianni Nepi created the melody. The disc sold 2560 copies but the label disappeared into the void (a flop?)
None of the contract rights were respected and the group was left with only a few copies of the album bought at cost price to give to friends. The Italian distributor 99 FLOOR was not prepared to pay for copies from Germany and so the product was not distributed in Italy. WAR TEARS is now in every catalogue in the world. Sandro Tersetti couldn't keep up the pace and left the group in 1997.
This time the blow for Gianni and Paolo was great - the idea of having to start all over again just too much. But with great determination and after an exhaustive search a new, young guitarist appeared as if from nowhere. Francesco Sozzi proved to be in harmony with the rest of the group from the start. In all these years Paolo and Gianni had honed their instrumental talents (Paolo drums, Gianni vocals) and had also started to teach. The communion of ideas and musical taste, Francesco's modern sound, and the technique that the three had acquired created the basis for something new - an amalgam of epic, progressive, black, and power metal, hard rock, and fusion - a cocktail which is difficult to define: "VIOLENCE".
While this latest work was being compiled the group was contacted by the producer Giorgio Mangora who proposed the reissue of THE ETRUSCAN PROPHECY on the new label formed by the more famous COMET RECORDS called METAL LEGION. The work was released in vinyl as well as CD formats and included an unreleased piece recorded in 1987: QUEEN OF THE SEWER. The re-release came out in May 2002 and was sold out in a few months!!
The recording phase of VIOLENCE had been completed and the group now only needed a producer to believe in it and to take the work to completion. The months passed and the agreement which had seemed by now a firm one proved not to be so. In response to continual questions as to why it was taking so long, the producer at first replied that they were behind with other productions, then began to be unavailable on the telephone inventing the feeblest excuses, then after a year and a half of delay sent the master tape back to the group saying that it would not have sold a single copy as it was not "commercial" enough. The group however wasn't defeated and kept its absolute faith in the product.
It contacted the independent label BLACK WIDOW of Genova which immediately offered to collaborate, but being already involved with three other productions and in order not to waste any more time, suggested the group contact the new label ANDROMEDA RELICS - full of enthusiasm and dedicated to TRUE METAL body and soul. The label was contacted and an agreement almost immediate. All the details were fixed at a meeting between the group and the producer in Parma. In the meantime the material was submitted to the expert sound technician TONY SODDU who had been living in Piombino for a few years. Tony was favourably impressed by the band's sound but asked them to play everything through once more with greater vigour and conviction. The group went back to the studio and after a month's work the album was completely re-recorded. Tony's sound mixing produced a compressed sound of great impact. It was Tony's choice not to use the drum machine (as usually happens with heavy metal) and all the sounds are "real". The choral parts (20 voices) were worked on in great detail long and hard. The "codas" of the songs weren't cut, conserving a live effect. The final result was better than anything DARK QUARTERER could have dreamt of. VIOLENCE was released in mid-September 2002. The first reviews (FLASH, PSYCHO!, METAL SHOCK) were enthusiastic and the call "BUY OR DIE" echoed through most of them.
In 2008 the band release the new album, 'Symbols', and in the beginning of the 2010 the first live-DVD of their story: 'Under the Spell'.
(Source: http://www.darkquarterer.com)
After hearing the band in rehearsal, Duccio Marchi, a great friend and keen fan of avant garde Rock, suggested they compose something completely new. The group thought about its degree of musical development and its capacity to create something both inspired by all the music already heard but that would be really different from everything.
It seemed impossible to realise anything truly original. If it hadn't been for the continual insistence of Duccio Marchi perhaps Dark Quarterer would never have existed!
Their first composition was too light-weight harmonically and too commercial, boring even on first hearing... Fulberto Serena experimented with classical sonorities (Bach), arpeggios that were also veritable riffs, almost exclusively in the minor aiming to achieve the darkest colour possible. On top of this, the name "Omega erre" as it stood suggested nothing good.
The name Dark Quarterer was Duccio's inspiration - he explained that "quarterer" was old English for the butcher of slaughtered animals. The "Logo" that identifies Dark Quarterer was the result of a more general idea of the group and has appeared since the first disc: a virtual trade mark!
The "new-born" Dark Quarterer started to produce their first musical sketches: Fulberto Serena brought ideas, themes, melodies and the group slowly transformed it all into definitive versions of the songs. Duccio also contributed to the final result demolishing all the musical choices that did not seem good to his ear like the worst critic. So it took a lot of instinct but also many corrections and radical changes in order to achieve a final result that could not be improved upon. Only when everyone firmly believed in it was the result considered definitive. The introverted and moody personality of Fulberto contributed to disturbing pieces like the self-titled Dark Quarterer, The Entity, Gates of Hell, in which the protagonist actually wanted to live and die in the name of evil to dethrone Lucifer in the underworld! The themes of Gianni Nepi's lyrics were anyway always inspired by Fulberto Serena. Paolo Ninci's role at the time was exclusively as percussionist. The arrangements were however the result of group collaboration.
The first reviews spoke of a masterpiece and of the creation of a new musical style "Epic progressive" (Cubito Claudio - Rockerilla 1987). About a year later the group was contacted by Giorgio Mangora who proposed the production of a second album. The songs had already been created in part and the guarantee of production gave the group the necessary stimulus to complete the work. "THE ETRUSCAN PROPHECY" was released in 1989 and included songs like "ANGELS OF MIRE" and "ETRUSCAN PROPHECY" itself, but just when it seemed that the group was finally taking off (the second album was enthusiastically reviewed by the chief editor of the German magazine METAL HAMMER, which spoke of DQ as the only Italian group composing real heavy metal and it was distributed in Germany by SEMAPHORE), the group's guitar player had an identity crisis and left the group for no plausible reason. His state of crisis lasted for some years and the search for a new player with the charisma and professional qualities of Fulberto was a real challenge.
In 1991 Sandro Tersetti accepted an offer to join the group. The style of this blues guitarist of the Blackmoore (Deep Purple) school was very different from that of the group which was much closer to that of Black Sabbath, with its dark harmonies - the search for something which could combine such contrasting styles proved very long. In 1991, with a piece that was very Led Zeppelin and almost as a bet, the group took part in the "Festival degli Sconosciuti di Ariccia" sponsored by Rita Pavone. It won the group section with OUT OF LINE and took part in the TV program on RAIDUE playing the piece live.
The following year the group was contacted by the German INLINE MUSIC (Accept) who offered the band a co-production. So in 1995 WAR TEARS was released on compact disc. The sound was stunning and the quality of the recording perfect but the group hadn't yet re-established its identity - in fact commercial hits like OUT OF LINE were mixed with Black Sabbath inspired pieces like NIGHTMARE. Paolo Ninci in a first composition created an inspired melody which was used in embryonic form in the opening track IN THE BEGINNING but was then taken up again more fully in the epic song LAST BREATH in the group's latest production "VIOLENCE". It was Gianni Nepi who had the tough job of composing most of the music and all the lyrics. Sandro Tersetti acted as composer only in providing the harmonies for A PRAY FOR MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA and in contributing a really melting arpeggio over which Gianni Nepi created the melody. The disc sold 2560 copies but the label disappeared into the void (a flop?)
None of the contract rights were respected and the group was left with only a few copies of the album bought at cost price to give to friends. The Italian distributor 99 FLOOR was not prepared to pay for copies from Germany and so the product was not distributed in Italy. WAR TEARS is now in every catalogue in the world. Sandro Tersetti couldn't keep up the pace and left the group in 1997.
This time the blow for Gianni and Paolo was great - the idea of having to start all over again just too much. But with great determination and after an exhaustive search a new, young guitarist appeared as if from nowhere. Francesco Sozzi proved to be in harmony with the rest of the group from the start. In all these years Paolo and Gianni had honed their instrumental talents (Paolo drums, Gianni vocals) and had also started to teach. The communion of ideas and musical taste, Francesco's modern sound, and the technique that the three had acquired created the basis for something new - an amalgam of epic, progressive, black, and power metal, hard rock, and fusion - a cocktail which is difficult to define: "VIOLENCE".
While this latest work was being compiled the group was contacted by the producer Giorgio Mangora who proposed the reissue of THE ETRUSCAN PROPHECY on the new label formed by the more famous COMET RECORDS called METAL LEGION. The work was released in vinyl as well as CD formats and included an unreleased piece recorded in 1987: QUEEN OF THE SEWER. The re-release came out in May 2002 and was sold out in a few months!!
The recording phase of VIOLENCE had been completed and the group now only needed a producer to believe in it and to take the work to completion. The months passed and the agreement which had seemed by now a firm one proved not to be so. In response to continual questions as to why it was taking so long, the producer at first replied that they were behind with other productions, then began to be unavailable on the telephone inventing the feeblest excuses, then after a year and a half of delay sent the master tape back to the group saying that it would not have sold a single copy as it was not "commercial" enough. The group however wasn't defeated and kept its absolute faith in the product.
It contacted the independent label BLACK WIDOW of Genova which immediately offered to collaborate, but being already involved with three other productions and in order not to waste any more time, suggested the group contact the new label ANDROMEDA RELICS - full of enthusiasm and dedicated to TRUE METAL body and soul. The label was contacted and an agreement almost immediate. All the details were fixed at a meeting between the group and the producer in Parma. In the meantime the material was submitted to the expert sound technician TONY SODDU who had been living in Piombino for a few years. Tony was favourably impressed by the band's sound but asked them to play everything through once more with greater vigour and conviction. The group went back to the studio and after a month's work the album was completely re-recorded. Tony's sound mixing produced a compressed sound of great impact. It was Tony's choice not to use the drum machine (as usually happens with heavy metal) and all the sounds are "real". The choral parts (20 voices) were worked on in great detail long and hard. The "codas" of the songs weren't cut, conserving a live effect. The final result was better than anything DARK QUARTERER could have dreamt of. VIOLENCE was released in mid-September 2002. The first reviews (FLASH, PSYCHO!, METAL SHOCK) were enthusiastic and the call "BUY OR DIE" echoed through most of them.
In 2008 the band release the new album, 'Symbols', and in the beginning of the 2010 the first live-DVD of their story: 'Under the Spell'.
(Source: http://www.darkquarterer.com)