LA MORTE VIENE DALLO SPAZIO

Journey into the unknown with these cosmic Italian space rockers

NAMED AFTER ITALY’S first sci-fi film – UK title Death Comes From Outer Space (1958) – Milan-based psychonauts LMVDS deploy their haywire musical time-scoop to stunning effect on their second LP, Trivial Visions, churning up lumps of ragged death metal, trancelike krautrock, goth, space rock, prog, doom and horror soundtrack. Although LMVDS’S roots as a “jam band open collective” have served them well, Trivial Visions represents a concerted effort to refine and direct the band’s energies towards a unified whole – a process hastened by organist/singer Melissa Crema joining in 2017. As she explains, LMVDS were formed by guitarists Stefano ‘Bazu’ Basurto and Angelo Avogadri as “something to relax with, just to play freely on stage. After I joined the band this changed,” she laughs, “because I told them, ‘I really love this project, why don’t you put more effort in and make it grow?’ That’s when we became a proper band, doing rehearsals every week, and starting to work in a constant way on the songs and to create the identity of the band.”

A key strand of that ID is a love of cult Italian cinema, with Dario Argento and Mario Bava the band’s go-to filmmakers: “Sometimes we play with these visuals behind us and try to make the music fit the movies!” says Melissa. Assisting in this regard is a slew of vintage analogue equipment: “I play Moog and theremin, and we have some Roland synths from the early 80s,” she says. “We listen to a lot of music, and when we find something we like, we try to transpose it into our songs, take inspiration and learn from it. There’s a bit from early 90s death metal, a bit of 60s psychedelia, a bit of 70s… We all had different backgrounds, and we tried to put them all together to create something new, to break barriers and do something unique.”

TRIVIAL VISIONS IS OUT NOW ON SVART RECORDS