Exclusive Interview: EX DEO mastermind Maurizio Iacono crosses the metal Rubicon with Roman history

November 7, 6:37 AMHeavy Metal ExaminerMark Morton

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Concept albums are not easy tasks to undertake. And releasing concept albums within the death metal community are even rarer endeavors. But Kataklysm front man Maurizio Iacono felt more than up to the challenge and created an epic record that encapsulates the glory, tragedy, brutality, and pageantry of Ancient Rome. Under the moniker Ex Deo, Iacono culled a band from the Kataklysm clan with the keyboardist from fellow Canadians Blackguard and released Romulus, an album steeped in history that sears into the listener’s psyche.

Taking the next logical step into what is quickly becoming a bit of a master plan, Iacono is bringing Ex Deo to the live forum, as part of the Ensiferum / Blackguard / Swashbuckle North American tour. Typically, a Roman Legionnaire would not be caught dead in the company of Vikings and pirates, but Iacono is making a bit of a peace offering to unite the world’s metal-borne cultures under a new crimson-hued banner. [NOTE: At press time, Ex Deo has delayed its participation on the tour until the final week, due to immigration issues.]

Read on as Examiner discusses Roman history and epic death metal with Maurizio Iacono.

Not to gush over your work, but I was completely blown away by Romulus. Not just because of how great the music turned out, but also because of the idea behind the album. Creating a concept album within the realm of death metal is a relatively unexplored territory, with a mere handful of exceptions. And what I really admire about Romulus is how you managed to expand the genre into other territories while retaining the integrity of the genre itself.

Absolutely. When I was originally doing the bulk of the interviews for this record, someone said to me that you would think that doing an album based on the Roman Empire would have been done by somebody somewhere, because it’s such a huge concept. The violence, crucifixions, and all those brutal things that relate to metal seem like it should have been done already, but they weren’t.

He asked me why I thought everyone stayed away from it, and I really couldn’t answer him. And he said that he thought the reason no one attempted it was because of how big the theme and history behind the Roman Empire, it would have been too big of a gamble for anyone to dare try it.

And I thought about it for a moment and was like, “Holy s***, if I had thought like that at the beginning, I probably would have hesitated.” Because it really is a huge thing that if you do it wrong or you don’t do it justice, it’s going to fail. And I think we nailed it because we were so innocent about it. Having the thing brewing in my head for such a long time, every step was pre-thought out, and the music just followed suit.

How did you come to turn the album into “Roman History 101”? How did you decide on which events to focus?

First of all, I grew up with a lot of that history. I’m actually of Italian descent – both my parents were born in Italy. So I flew to Italy a lot, and whenever I was there, wherever I was standing, I got this impression…let me it it this way, when you step off of a plane in New York, you just get this sense of newness, but when you get off of a plane in Rome, you feel steeped in history immediately. Just touching a wall that has been intact for 2,000 years, or walking onto a hill where so many slaves were crucified…something about that experience has always intrigued me. I eventually started reading about it and really getting into it, and felt that I needed to do something with it.

So Romulus is my way of introducing Rome. I couldn’t really go too in-depth right away, because we’re talking about an empire with over 1,000 of history. I didn’t want to over-complicate it and run the risk of it going over everyone’s heads. So what I did was started with Rome’s foundation with Romulus, and then I went into characters that people knew, like Julius Caesar and Octavian – things people could connect with and understand right away. And the more people catch on with it, hopefully we can do a second record and go into more details and get into more crazy s*** that went on back then. I want to keep it interesting, though.

So what will determine whether or not you do another Ex Deo record?

Well, if the people want me to do another on, I will definitely do it. I already have the ideas, concept and visuals already in my mind for a second record. I just want to make sure that people want another one. But the way things are looking, I probably will do another one, because this album got off to a great start, and every day I’m finding more and more people latching on to it.

Well, I think it’s an easy album to get into, because right from the first track, you get a sense of honesty. And as you listen to the album, you really can almost feel those emotions and that dark, potent energy. It’s quite obvious this album means a lot to you.

Wow, that’s cool. Thank you! This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. And knowing that Kataklysm was going to take a year and a half off from releasing another record, I felt it was the right time to do it. I was actually planning to release it on a small, independent label, but I had to let Nuclear Blast hear the demos (because they got first pick, due to Kataklysm), and they flipped. They really got excited about it. I just wanted to release the album; I wasn’t planning on touring it or anything. But they saw it was something really special and the way the album came together, we had to do it justice.

The way we wrote this was completely different from anything else we had done. I don’t know if anyone else would write this way. We completely plastered the studio with Roman artwork and artifacts, and we had movies like Spartacus playing on the TV without sound, so we could get a visual base of where we wanted to go. Then we just started writing the music with all this inspiration around us, and we wanted to create a metal soundtrack atmosphere.

What I like about it is that not only does each song convey a different message, but they also run through different emotions – like “Romulus” is a massive tragic piece, but then you have “Legio XIII,” which makes you want to grab a sword and jam it into someone’s gut.

Yeah, the music is really fitting to different emotions. There are songs that are going to make you just think, then there are songs that are going to make you aggressive. But that just defines the Roman philosophy. There were a lot of philosophical views, organizing discipline, but then you had the brutal aspect that played in tandem with the philosophy. And I was definitely aiming for that with this album. It’s all very dramatic.

Like “Surrender the Sun,” which is about a gladiator – it puts you in the mindset that the only way for you to survive is by killing someone else in the arena. It wasn’t based on the movie; that’s just how life was for them. And some of them got so popular, they were revered with the equivalence of our modern sports celebrities. I just thought that metal was the right soundtrack for this theme, outside of Classical.

I noticed that you use several different vocal techniques throughout the album. Did you do this to represent the different characters or the feelings of the songs?

Well, they had to fit the songs first. And I needed to have a narrative voice behind them, but at the same time, I needed something dramatic. I mean, it is my voice and I can’t change who I am, but I think that including some new vocal tones was important for differentiating it from Kataklysm. Like the song “The Final War,” I start with the low death metal vocal, and then I sing high, and then I go into this other vocal style. What I was trying to do was create the emotional content and then draw out the characters as it progressed.

How did all of the guest performances come together? Did you seek them out, or did they find out about it from Nuclear Blast and come running to you?

I knew the guys; I’ve been friends with them all for many years. What I wanted to do was pick guys whose bands had a similar interest or focus on history. Nergal touched on some of the Roman elements with Behemoth on songs like “Christians to the Lions” [on Thelema.6]. So I asked him, and he was really into it, but he was in the middle of recording the new Behemoth album, but we eventually got together and made it happen. And Nile, well Karl Sanders was just perfect for “The Final War,” because it was all about Octavian coming into the Egyptian seas and came into Egypt to confront Marc Antony. He was totally about it and jumped on it right away. And Obsidian [Keep of Kalessin] did a phenomenal solo on “Cruor Nostri Abbas;” he’s a guy who works a lot with the symphonic metal sounds, and also was really into it. It was just great to connect with these guys who had an interest in history.

So how did you manage to keep the Ex Deo sound from bleeding into the tried-and-true Kataklysm sound? Was that a difficult balance to maintain?

No, I think the songs just developed the right way. I know there are a lot of bands out there that have side projects that sound exactly the same as the main band, but I don’t see the point in doing that. But if I was to go into this project with a bunch of new guys with whom I didn’t have an immediate chemistry, I think it would have failed.

The cool thing was, when we were on the road touring for the Kataklysm Prevail album, I’d go on the bus and put on the HBO series Rome on the DVD player, and it didn’t matter who was partying on the bus, they’d all stop and come watch it with me. They got so into the visuals and the brutality that it actually inspired them to want to be a part of it. That’s really the foundation of how Ex Deo came together. Of course, if it came out sounding like Kataklysm, I would have stopped it and gotten other people out of necessity, but it actually worked.

You know, a mere ten years ago, an album like Romulus would have been considered blasphemy in death metal circles. What do you think it is about this new decade that death metal has been able to open up and become more than what it originally was?

I think a lot of kids are becoming more open-minded and interested in different things. There were too many bands out there sounding the same and driving that sound into the ground. So I think that bands started taking notice and changing it up. What I wanted to do with this project was present something that was aggressive yet had a lot of life to it. I wanted something that could have its own identity.

I also wanted to create something that could spark conversations and discussions about that could help translate into the future. It’s amazing what you see every day that was affected by Rome. Take the American $1 bill, for example. It’s got Latin writing on it, and it’s got an eagle on it. That all goes back to Ancient Rome. The eagle was also Rome’s symbol, because it represented being able to see and conquer your enemies from miles away.

That’s the same reason why the Mexican flag has an eagle with a snake in its claws. It’s all about dominance, and it’s everywhere. It’s crazy how much of our modern life is influenced by the Roman Empire. Even General Patton, when he won his last battle, he paraded with a red cape across his back, because he was emulating his idol, Julius Caesar.

I think it’s important to put out albums like this to help draw people into the concept and hopefully interest them enough to start reading about history. I’m happy, because it really is good education. If I had this in school, with metal music playing and learning about history, that would have been awesome!

But what’s funny is that power metal bands have actually been doing similar things with different themes for years. Did you have any fears that people would go to record stores, see the Ex Deo record and mistake it for a power metal album?

I’ve actually had some people complain about that a little bit. They said, “what the f*** is this growling doing on this record??” But yeah, I know what you’re saying. Most power metal bands, though, stick to fantasy themes with dragons and stuff. But there are those that do go into the King Arthur literature and Saxon history, but there’s no way it can come close to the history of Rome – it’s just too big. And everybody has been exposed to it at some point. Either you have seen a movie specifically about it, or you have seen one of those Jesus movies your parents made you watch when you were a kid; so everybody can relate to it on some level.

I think what will really help drive home what we’re doing is when people come out to see us play live. It’s not a big production, but we have a very big sound, and we’re very sincere with our playing, and it adds another level to the passion about the theme.

So, does it grate on your nerves at all when people mispronounce Ex Deo as “Ex-Dio,” as in Ronnie James Dio?

[Laughs] Well, at least there are really only two ways you can possibly pronounce it. “Ex Day-o” is the correct way. But you wouldn’t believe how many different ways I’ve heard people try to pronounce Kataklysm. I’ve heard “Katta-kill-eism,” “cat-a clips,” I’ve heard them all.

So how are you planning to tour for this? It seems like something that can easily contain a lot of components that can get blown up and expensive very quickly.

Oh, we’re not going to treat it like the road warriors that Kataklysm is. You’re not going to see Ex Deo out on the road ever couple months. We’re trying to do it justice and bring Rome alive, so we’re treating it like an event. If you want to see it, then you’d better come out and check out the show while we’re here, because I really don’t know when we’ll get an opportunity to do it again. I’m getting too busy with the two bands plus my management company that my attention can only be on so many things at once. But right now, my focus is on Ex Deo, and I’m really excited to do this tour in America. 

Catch Ex Deo on the road with Ensiferum, Hypocrisy, Blackguard, Swashbuckle, and Lazarus A.D. on the following dates:

Nov 29 at House of Blues in Chicago, IL
Nov 30 at Peabody’s in Cleveland, OH
Dec 1 at Opera House in Toronto, ON, Can.
Dec 2 at Imperial in Quebec City, QC, Can.
Dec 3 at Medley in Montreal, QC, Can.
Dec 4 at The Palladium in Worcester, MA
Dec 5 at Irving Plaza in New York, NY