Upon This Dawning – The Highwire Daze Legacy Interviews

The Sonic Invasion of Upon This Dawning

Based out of Italy, Upon This Dawning has been spending a lot of time in the States these days. Touring in support of their Fearless Records debut entitled To Keep Us Safe, the collective has been on the road touring with the likes of Motionless In White and Chelsea Grin – and are about to hit the road once again with I See Stars, Get Scared and Palisades…

Highwire Daze Note in 2020: I just rediscoved Upon This Dawning while programming music for our Radio Station’s Metalcore show.  Another very amazing band from the metalcore scene circa 2012-2015.  A final album We Are All Sinners would be released through Artery before Upon This Dawning would call it a day.  According to Wikipedia: “Since the end of 2016 the band is in pause due to Dani Nelli and Teo Botticini choosing to focus on a trap career with their duo Danien & Theø.”  Here is an interview I did with Teo in early 2013…

Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in Upon This Dawning, and how long the band has been together.
Hey guys, I’m Teo, I sing and I play guitar for Upon This Dawning. This lineup has been together since 2010 but the band started in 2007.

Where is your band based out of and what is your local music scene like there? Are there any local bands you could recommend?
We’re from Verona, Italy. Unfortunately Italy doesn’t have a big music scene, especially for this kind of music, so it’s kinda hard to get big over there. There are very good bands though like our friends Tasters & My Breathing Harmony! Check em out if you don’t know them yet!

How did you wind up being signed with Fearless Records?
Getting signed has been one of the best things to ever happen to us ! We worked really hard for that and we’re very happy we made it! We came out with this video of our song “Of Human Action” and Fearless really liked it so they decided to get us signed.

 Is there any story or concept behind the CD title To Keep Us Safe?
Almost all of our songs are about friendship and brotherhood cause we think there’s nothing more important than your friends. We’re very close to each other like real brothers and this is kind of the meaning behind the title “To Keep Us Safe“; being all together, this love and this friendship is what keeps you safe and you can face anything with your friends by your side.

Please select two songs from To Keep Us Safe and what inspired the lyrics.
From Hell To The West:
I wrote this song right after we got signed, and that inspired me to write a song about what we were about to do. Moving to the States with my best friends to be musicians as a real job, that’s what we always dreamt of and it was becoming real. So this song is basically about that. I dont mean to say that our country is like hell haha, Italy is beautiful. “Hell” could be the situation we were living in when we were still in Italy. We all had different jobs we hated, we worked all day and practiced all night every night for years. We sacrificed a lot to get here but we’re happy to say that we’re living the dream now 🙂

Of Human Action:
This song means a lot to us cause it’s the song that got us get signed and it’s also the first official single we released! “Stay close to all your friends” is a lyric from this song and we all have dog tags with this phrase on it! It really means a lot to us.

Who did the cover art for To Keep Us Safe and how much input did you have on it?
Our friend Aaron Marsh from Forefathers Group made the artwork and we tried to do something that reminded us of our country, since we’re an overseas band we thought it would’ve been cool to do something that reminded us of Italy, so everything came up talking with the label and we were all good with this idea.

What could one expect from a live Upon This Dawning show?
Just come see us live and we’ll blow your mind hahaha!

What was it like recording A New Beginning with Chris Motionless and is there any chance he will perform his part live with you guys on the tour?
Chris is a good friend of ours, we met him the first time when we played together in Italy a few years ago and we became good friends after he recorded A New Beginning with us. We just did the Infamous Tour which was the first MIW headlining tour and he came on stage with us a few times, it was awesome and the crowd got crazy. It’s definitely an honor for us to have him in our album!

What was it like working with Drew Fulk and what did he contribute to the overall recording of the album?
Drew is the best, he’s one of my best friends and working with him was awesome! We went to his studio with almost all the songs already written, he helped us rework some parts, and we worked together on A New Beginning, Nothing Lasts Forever & The One And Only. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life since it was also my first time in the states, we definitely had a lot of fun!

Any strange or scary touring stories you could share?
Nothing scary during the tour fortunately; we always have a lot of fun and party! I could tell you about us and Chelsea Grin being kicked out of a bowling alley cause we were too drunk hahaha that night was wild!

Do you have any messages for your fans here in the States?
Just thank you so much to all of our fans that keep it real!! Thanks for your big support and keep doing it. We love you so much <3

Upon This Dawning is: Gianiluca Molinari (Vocals), Matteo Botticini (Vocals/Guitar), Andrea Moserle (Keys/Programming), Carlo Todeschini (Guitar), Matt Leone (Bass), Luca Orio (Drums).

(Interview by Ken Morton)

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