SHADING

Robots are dicks. These cyperpunkfuelled tech metallers aren’t

Is TeCHNOlOgy HuMaNITy’s enemy? What if we lost control of AI? These are the questions in the noggins of Italian prog metallers Shading. Their hyper-futuristic, cyberpunk-influenced album, The Vanishing Of Our Lore, is set in a hostile Blade Runner-meets-Matrixesque world where machines have assumed power over humans.

“Every day I use a lot of technology. Part of me is scared of this connection, but the other part loves it,” says guitarist Andreas Miotto. “Cyberpunk is a future that I really hope won’t become reality but it’s possible.”

That love/hate relationship with technology lies at Shading’s core. Their recent single, The Scent, is about technological dependency turning us into soulless beings, but technology has allowed them to realise their dream. After they emailed demos to Tesseract guitarist Acle Kahney and Melbournebased engineer Ermin Hamidovich (Architects, Periphery), Acle mastered 2017 single Breathless while Ermin took on mastering duties for The Vanishing…, perfecting the tracks over Facebook and email. “Acle had a lot of suggestions that we ended up using,” says Andreas. “He told us we were tight and there was good songwriting but we need to focus more on guitar tone.”

Shading formed more than a decade ago, when founding members, Andreas and drummer Mattia Bastianello, were just 13 and 14 years old. They released their debut, Human Colour Perception, in 2016, but in their eyes The Vanishing Of Our Lore is their first ‘proper’ fulllength, the moment everything fell into place, aesthetically, sonically and conceptually. “We are confident to say this is our first album,” says Andreas. “Even though we have been a band for 10 years, I think we are just starting.”