NEREIS

New album “Azure”, out on November 21st!

The still relatively young musicians continue their mission to gently and respectfully help the beloved classic heavy metal and hard rock, which made up a significant part of their youth and early career, evolve.

In the process, the revelry and yearning of early hard rock romanticism meets a dash of robust prog metal, coming together to create an atmospheric density reminiscent of a powerful film soundtrack. NEREIS themselves describe this approach as follows: “What we wanted was to create a sound that could satisfy the hard rock nostalgia in us and our audience, while conveying a sense of freshness and experimentation, all the while maintaining a catchy and easily understandable character.”

Founded in 2007 under the name Black Star in Trento, Italy, NEREIS initially started out as a cover act, touring Italian pubs with hits by greats such as Helloween, Iron Maiden, Saxon, Skid Row, Judas Priest, and Alter Bridge until they had enough original material to release their demo “Burnin’ Game” in 2012, followed by the EP “From the Ashes” (2014).
During this time, the band played dozens of shows, e.g. with Chris Slade (ex-AC/DC), Riot V, Royal Hunt, and Arthemis, performed at festivals such as Sun Valley Metal Fest and Rock im Ring, and finally released their successful album “Turning Point” on Eclipse Records in 2018, for the first time under the new name NEREIS. The album was so well received that NEREIS subsequently toured extensively with Three Days Grace and Bullet For My Valentine.

Meanwhile, the band moved from their original guitar-dominated sound towards a concept in which the boundaries between the instrumental layers blur: Sometimes the guitar follows the vocals, sometimes the vocals follow the guitars. Synth inserts form a meta-level that holds everything together atmospherically and makes the music seem like a soundtrack at times, without ever falling into the trap of sounding like a canned orchestra.

In a sense, the synths do not play a primarily decorative role here, but one that can best be compared to that of a mediator. Together with the powerful foundation of bass and drums, they mediate between the guitar riffs and the vocals, which are thus able to maintain a state of perfect duality. To this day, bands such as Alter Bridge, Muse, Audioslave, Shinedown, and Europe are among the major influences of the quintet, which, after several lineup changes, consists of Andrea Barchiesi (lead vocals), Mattia Pessina (guitar), Samuel Fabrello (guitar), Michele Gelmi (bass), and Davide Odorizzi (drums).

Lead singer Andrea in particular stands out with his vocal range and professes Joey Tempest (Europe) as his vocal role model – even the water bottle Andrea uses to keep fit during shows belonged to Joey Tempest until a Europe show in 2004, when Andrea caught it after it was thrown into the audience. He has held it in honor ever since. What the singer, who was also active in a Europe cover band he had founded at the time, could not have imagined yet: 20 years later, in September 2024, NEREIS were even able to open a Europe show at the Trentino Music Arena themselves, after being personally selected by their Swedish idols from the participants in the TMA Contest.

With this stable and tour-experienced lineup, the new album is now on the horizon. It’s named “AZURE,” and NEREIS fans will probably simply remember it as The Blue Album in the band’s distant – and hopefully bright – future.

Nereis