Death Riders: A Month Of “Success”

A young Italian metal band challenges the world, trying to be noticed in a difficult and controversial context.

March 2011: the album of a new Italian metal band was published. They are called “Death Riders”. The most interesting thing to be noticed is that these guys have been playing for about 10 years, effortlessly trying to spread their music, with no particularly effective results. This void is not due to the quality of their music, but to the poor musical context of Italy, where producers and listeners have little interest in discovering new stuff. Finally after such a long time, and so many efforts, here comes a contract: the Death Riders sign a deal with “Lost Sound Records”, thanks to the contribution of the management agency “Alkemist Fanatix Europe”. There comes the debut album, during 2010, recorded at the renowned “Zenith Recording Studio” lead by Frank Andiver (former Labyrinth, Wonderland) and mastered at Finnvox in Helsinki by Mika Jussila. 

The line up of this “Through Centuries of Dust” includes Marco "Cane" Monacelli (Guitar), Cristiano Coppa (Bass), Alessio Monacelli (Drums), Francesco Pellegrini (Lead Guitar) e Valerio Gaoni (Vocals). 

The first reactions are very enthusiastic and many webzine rapidly update their “review” section by adding Death Riders’ new platter. “Emozioni Distorte” lead by Daniele Gatti, writes: “Amazing. I cannot find a better word to describe the album…it is not easy to be encircled in a unique category…the musicians’ technique is astonishing.” 

Stereoinvaders, through the review of Maximo, says “..a battle rhythm…An original, fast and overwhelming album, the voice is clear, concrete and powerful, and most of all, in tune. Very fast patterns perfectly supported by the guitarwork. These are some of the first impressions, but then even the more prestigious magazines wrote about them, like Fabrizio Massignani’s Metal Maniac which gives the album a good 8/10". He writes: "The waiting for this album has not been vain, because we are dealing with one of the best works of Italian metal in the last years. It expresses speed, class, technique and power, and mixes the rhythmic patterns of teutonic Blind Guardian and Helloween style, the genius of Nevermore and the impact of Trivium’s modern thrash style. Death Riders easily win the challenge by showing such an impressive charge (and passion)".

The distribution of “Through Centuries of Dust” is worldwide, the sales, one month after the publishing, seem to be very satisfying. But most of all, the success of their page on social network has to be noticed (more than 5.000 views on their YouTube videos, more than 3.000 fan on their reverbnation page, visits from all over the world on their official site DRMETAL and also the hundreds of website which share and download illegally their music: unfortunately or luckily nowadays the success of a band is made of this.