Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
I’m a big supported of all kinds of metal bands, especially if they’re talented. So this is why I picked the opportunity to interview Piper Ferrari, lead vocalist of Roman Candle, who are releasing a new album soon. We spoke about Las Vegas, life and music, of course!
Hey Piper, how are you doing today?
Piper Ferrari: I’m good, how are you?
I’m great, thank you. So, with Roman Candle, you’re releasing a new album, “Unadulterated“. Can you share with us a moment that happened while working on it, where someone else’s idea shifted a song?
Piper Ferrari: With the last song that we just released, and the first track on the album, “Blasphemous Act“, I really wanted to end that song on a really heavy note, so we moved the breakdown that’s in the middle to the end of the song. We literally just copy and pasted it twice to the end of the track because our drummer was in LA and couldn’t re-record it, and yeah, I think it changed the whole vibe of the song. They weren’t so stoked on it at first, but then it turned out pretty cool.
When I listen to that again, I’m gonna pay more attention to that.
Piper Ferrari: Yeah, for sure, it’s crazy. That whole song came together so last minute. We already had the album recorded and mixed and mastered and ready to go, and then it was late February. I was like, “We need this song on the album, we need a heavier song“, and we just threw it together super fast.
How do you keep your creative process honest since the band is growing and gaining more attention now?
Piper Ferrari: Being on a label like Sumerian and getting all this kind of momentum out of nowhere, there’s pressure that we put on ourselves to change things up and to try to maybe make things more palatable or more mainstream-kind-of-ish. You want to write the song that’ll be TikTok trending, or you want to write the song that’ll make it on the Spotify playlist, but then we check ourselves and then every time we start even thinking about that for even a split second, we realize that didn’t get us here. It wouldn’t make sense to do that. We got here off of a five song screamo EP, so we’re gonna try to keep true to that as much as we can.
I think also the fans and the audience in general relate more to something that’s genuine and not forced.
Piper Ferrari: Exactly, yeah. Live, everyone loves the heavy songs. People want to mosh and they want to dance, so I’m always leaning towards doing something heavier, which I think the album as a whole is significantly crazier than our first EP. But yeah, that’s not necessarily what our fan base wants, though. I just assume that that’s what it is, because that’s what I see at shows, and then I have to realize “Wait, there’s still a whole other audience of people that aren’t at every show, that still like the old kind of softer stuff”.
So you’re from Las Vegas, right?
Piper Ferrari: Born and raised.
Las Vegas has a scene with its own mythology. How has that environment shaped your sound or maybe your worldview for music?
Piper Ferrari: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think it goes back to what I was just saying about things being heavier. When we put out our first EP, “Discount Fireworks”, we weren’t expecting anything to come out of that. Jonas and I were in a band before this, and that band fell apart, and we we still wanted to keep playing music together. So, let’s make this new band. Then we started getting put on some local shows, and I realized, even though we were the softest band in the room, and we were kind of like the dorkiest too, in a way, people were going nuts at our shows. I grew up in the Vegas scene, and there were suddenly kids that I’ve never even seen move that felt comfortable to dance to my band. It was just crazy. It was just so unexpected, because on that first release we did, there was maybe one true breakdown in the whole album, and yet people were still going crazy, and it just kept getting crazier. Every show we played after that was more intense than the next one. So I think seeing that, being on stage and seeing people move like that for your band is such an addictive feeling. It is the best feeling in the world. To see that on the other side and be like, “Wow, this is so cool, we want more of that“, I think it influenced us to go a little bit heavier with the new stuff for sure.
Can I ask which software do you use to work on songs or recording?
Piper Ferrari: Jonas uses Cubase. He produced and recorded the album all in Cubase. I know it’s kind of old school. I don’t really know anything about that stuff, but he’s told me it’s a bit more old school.
Can you share with us some titles or nicknames that you gave to some demos that he worked on in the early stages?
Piper Ferrari: Oh my gosh. Jonas always starts the songwriting process with a riff from him, and he always gives it a random title, like whatever movie he was watching, or whatever the vibe was. I know there were a couple Twin Peaks references, which is why “Fire in the Night Sky Forever” is “Fire in the Night Sky Forever“. He loves David Lynch. “Lady Lazarus” was originally called “Sertraline“, like the antidepressant. Gosh, “My Silence Costs More Than You Can Afford” was originally called “Sundowners“, which is like the disorder that blind people have, where like their time is like all flip floppy. Looking back, some of these working titles are really serious, and kind of sad and depressing. It was mostly me that was like, “We gotta lighten this up a little bit. We gotta do something a little funny“. It’s usually the other way around, the working titles are kind of silly and then the real titles serious. But we did it the other way around. I feel like our stuff is already so serious, that like the titles themselves is the only space we have to be a little funny. I love like the early 2000s, all the old metalcore bands that would have like a whole novel as a song title. I grew up listening to that stuff, so I wanted to lean into that a little bit. I know on our on our first EP, “Mad Girls Love Song” was originally called “Flying Dutchman“. Because it reminded me of like a pirate song, before there was any vocals on it.
The website that I work for is based in Finland. And are there any Finnish artists that you like that you listen to that you’re inspired by?
Piper Ferrari: Oh, Children of Bodom, I like them a lot. I’ve always wanted to go to Finland, it looks beautiful. I don’t always follow into the lore behind it. A lot of the stuff I like, I want to just keep a little bit of mystery behind it sometimes.
Speaking of influences, are there any non musical influences like films or books or visual arts that have shaped somehow the world of Roman Candle?
Piper Ferrari: For sure. Yeah. I am very inspired by a lot of old feminist like poetry. I love Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf. Those two specifically were like huge influences on the album. We named a song “Lady Lazarus” after Sylvia Plath’s poem, which I think is amazing. I mentioned, Jonas loves Twin Peaks. So there’s a lot of David Lynch inspo for sure on his end. Those are probably the top three influences for sure. We also really love like found footage horror like a lot. The movie “Skidamarink” indirectly, which I know is really controversial. It’s really weird. And it was like a really low budget found footage movie. I liked it because it felt like a childhood fever dream. There was really no dialogue, there’s jokes on Twitter that’s on a picture of a wall.
The whole movie is just like really unsettling, but it made me feel the same way I felt when I was a kid. Like when I was waking up from a nightmare, which I’d never felt that before in my life. That movie like directly inspired “Can We Watch Something Happy,” which is a line from the movie. I’d say check it out. I feel like I saw it in theaters and I haven’t watched it since then. So I don’t know if it would hold up at home. It’s a very a auditory movie. If you do watch it at home, watch it by yourself with the lights off in a very dark room, volume all the way up. Then I think it’s it’s cool. You got to get the mood right for that movie. Otherwise, it’s honestly so boring.
Is there something that a fan has told you that stayed with you? Maybe like, I don’t know, maybe at the show or online or in person?
Piper Ferrari: The hardest one to hear was someone telling me that their partner had passed away recently and that they were listening to our whole discography and it was helping them get through all that. They reached out to me I think six months after it had happened with “Your music means so much to me and you helped me get through this really bad thing“. That was really hard to hear. It’s stories like that, that make me feel like this is worth something. I always feel a little sad when people say that they really relate to our more depressing songs. Because it’s like, “Damn, you get it“. But it’s cool that they get it because I don’t feel alone. But also it sucks that people can resonate with this at the same time. It’s a double edged sword. I think about that story often. That’s my worst nightmare, losing my partner, so I can’t even imagine. But there have been a lot of girls that have reached out to me and been like, “You’re like the reason I started being in a band, because I saw you do it”. That was really cool. When we first started playing shows in Vegas, we were the only female fronted. I hate saying that. Now there’s all these girls that are a couple of years younger than me, and that’s a really cool feeling. So I think those on a positive note are some things I’ve heard that it’s really nice, it sticks with me.
Speaking of shows, you have some shows coming up.
Piper Ferrari: Yeah, we do. We’re going on tour with Spirit World, which is also a band from Vegas. They’re amazing. They’re very like cowboy, Western metal, really fun. I love Stu, he’s like role model for me. So it’s really cool to go out and tour with them. We are going to tour in Europe in September. I don’t know if I can say with what band yet, because I don’t know if it’s out. But it’s a really big deal for us. We’re really excited, it’s gonna be a lot of fun. And we’re playing all over: we’re playing the UK, we’re playing a bunch of spots in Europe.
This is very American of me: I was referring to the UK as Europe. When we were out there, and I didn’t realize it’s separate. As an American, we don’t really get exposed to a lot of international news. It sucks. Every other country is so on top of that. Our media out here is just so Western centric. So I had no idea. We played the UK last year and it was the most fun I’ve ever had on tour. The scene out there was amazing, my favorite show I’ve ever played was in London so I’m really excited. Everyone was just stoked and the energy was great. So I am really excited for to see the rest over there.
For your headliner show that you have in Vegas, and then with Spirit World, and will we hear more from the new album, like played live?
Piper Ferrari: Yeah, I think we’re probably gonna play a song or two from the old stuff. But the rest of it’s going to be all all the new material. We’ve been playing that five song EP for the past four years and I’m so over it. So I’m so excited to play some new stuff. I think our new stuff is so much better compared to our last album.
Can you share with us your family’s reaction to Roman Candle?
Piper Ferrari: My family is really supportive. My dad owns a venue out here in Vegas, he was a drummer when I was growing up. He was in a couple bands out here in Vegas so he just opened up a venue in Vegas. It’s like the first all ages 400 cap venue that isn’t a veterans hall, which is really cool, so he’s insanely supportive. We just shot our last music video at his spot. Then on my mom’s side, they’re also stoked, really supportive and happy for me. They think it’s crazy that I just scream like that. I like their reaction to that, every single time is like, “I don’t know how you do that“. And then I send them videos of shows. My grandmother says “Oh my god, Piper, be careful, I’m so proud of you. That’s so cool. But please don’t don’t get hurt“. It’s so funny. I have a lot of siblings too, and they all come to all my shows too. My little sister actually is on the album cover, that’s a picture I took of her. That story was crazy. She was staying the night at my house, and then I was just like, “Oh my god, we need an album cover. Let’s go“. There was a little patch of empty desert right by my house and we went over there and I just threw a bunch of fake blood on her and took a bunch of pictures. I don’t know if they understand the music necessarily, but they’re they’re proud and supportive. And that’s all I could ask for.
Piper, thank you so much for being such a good sport and for taking the time to do this interview with me. Is there anything else that you like to add to our readers?
Piper Ferrari: I don’t think so. Thank you for listening to the album. Thank you for being interested in us. It means the world and it always will. I don’t think I’ll ever take this for granted. So I’m stoked to be here and I’m stoked that people like it.
