Doomed Confessionary: Enrico, Manuel & Matteo (Onioroshi)
Photos by Jacopo Gioacchini
Onioroshi is a progressive psych rock band hailing from Cervia, Italy. The three members met for the first time in early 2014 during the Kimono Lights project, a dreampop-shoegaze independent band which recorded 2 LPs and an EP in three years and played in venues around Italy. In early 2018 that band stopped and in the next months Onioroshi’s debut album »Beyond These Mountains« was created.
While the band was trying to find its place in the music industry the pandemic struck the world of music and forced them to change their plans. In early 2020 Onioroshi started working on a new LP, investing the next three years into giving shape to what really is their idea of music, creating something more structured and deep than their debut album. The new LP »Shrine« is the result of this meticulous work of sound and structure research, with the three musicians searching for ways beyond the threshold, trying to create a completely new experience for the listener. »Shrine« just dropped on February 21st, 2025 via Bitume Prods.
Onioroshi are Manuel Fabbri (bass, vocals), Enrico Piraccini (drums, vocals) and Matteo Sama (guitar).
Can you say a few words about your band?
Enrico: Onioroshi is a heavy psych and progressive trio from Italy. Matteo on guitar, Manuel on bass and vocals, and me, Enrico, on drums and vocals too. Our music is deeply linked to jamming, but we like to shape it in complex structures and add a lot of vocal parts meant to work like instruments themselves. Our tracks are usually long and feature multiple sound layers, we want the listeners to dive in the dreamy and unpredictable flow of our music, to possibly find something within themselves. As musicians, this band is meant to give the three of us complete creative freedom and to experiment regardless of a defined music genre.
We’ve recently published our second LP »Shrine«, consisting of 3 tracks for a total of 54 minutes. It came out for Bitume Prods (France) on February 21, 2025, and was recorded at Andrea Scardovi’s Dunastudio.
What was the biggest challenge for the band?
Manuel: It’s a big question, there would be a lot to say. I think right now the challenge for us is to get our music heard from as many people as possible. We are still a “new” band, there’s an immense number of people in the world who might like what we do but simply don’t know that we exist. For us it’s also a bit more complicated to get listened to since we’ve chosen to play long tracks. We did it for a lot of reasons, one of them is because we want to have a bit more attention when someone listens to us, we play complex music and to fully appreciate it you need to stop for a while and empty your mind, so it can fill up spontaneously again. It’s harder to get someone to do that, but it’s also a more powerful experience.
But we always face another challenge while our sound keeps evolving. In a world where there’s hundreds of thousands of bands and musicians and where most of the stuff has already been thought of, or done better than you could, it’s very hard to create your own, personal sound, that feeling that you have when you listen to a band and you know it’s that band, and it couldn’t be any other. We are trying to reach that and we’ll keep trying. As hard as it can be, it is also of the uttermost importance from our point of view: the fact that we sound like ourselves, not like someone else.
What can you be most proud of so far?
Manuel: The way the three of us work together and communicate is what has made all of this possible, we are very proud of ourselves as a band, in the sense of being together and making music.
Enrico: I think making this LP, »Shrine«, really is our biggest achievement so far, and it would never have been possible without this alliance which Manuel is talking about. I remember 10 years ago, I used to think I wanted to do an album like this one, but I didn’t feel like I was capable of doing it as a musician, and I didn’t have a band who’d be willing to make a heavy and complex work like this. Well, it happened. One day I’ll die and maybe someone will remember about »Shrine«, and my soul will blink with a grin in some forgotten depth of hell.
What was your biggest regret?
Enrico: Regrets? No regrets. Well, surely each one of us might have some, concerning his personal life. But as a band, no regrets at all. We are doing what we love and hopefully our passion for music will bring us somewhere.
What was the best concert/tour so far and why?
Enrico: The first concert for »Shrine« will happen just tomorrow, but we haven’t played it live yet right now, when we are making this interview! I already know this show will be amazing. But the last one, which happened quite a long time ago, was such a heartwarming night. It was 2023, in the last four years we almost never played on stage because we wanted to focus only on the new material we were composing. At that time only Pyramid and Laborintus were almost finished, even if they were quite different from what they ended up being in the actual record. It was the first time we had someone else hearing that music, we didn’t know how they would react. Turns out everyone one was super engaged and encouraging, a lot of people complimented us for the work we were carrying on for this second album. It was so nice, and it gave us strength moving on in the creation of »Shrine«. At that time only half of the last song, “Egg”, existed, and most of the lyrics were not like they are now.
What was the biggest surprise on the music scene for you?
Enrico: No alarms and no surprises, one might say. We have played in other bands before, we know the scene pretty well being music enthusiasts since we were teenagers… something really surprising still has to happen to us.
What is currently in your heavy musical rotation?
Manuel: Sunny Day Real Estate, Faetooth, Rollins Band, The Ocean.
Enrico: Nine Inch Nails, Against All Logic, Massive Attack.
Matteo: Wheel, Deafheaven.
What was the best advice you’ve ever been given as a musician?
Enrico: My drum teacher William, back in 2014, listened to the first album from our past band, it was something between dream pop and post rock. He’s a jazz player, but he could listen to everything and loved music in all its forms. And he told me, the parts he liked the most were those where the instruments went in different directions at the same time, opening a space inside of the song, making it wide and full of breath. Onioroshi is really about this, or at least about a dynamic between doing this and the exact opposite. He made me realize how powerful this freedom of the instruments can be in experimental music, he taught me a lesson which has really impacted the choices I made while playing the drums in recent years.
Manuel: I think the most important thing is to be yourself. Don’t try to emulate others, find your own way regardless of what other people do. You must not close your mind and be always open to experimentation and different influences.
What are your guilty pleasures?
Enrico: Peanut butter. That shit is crazy.
Manuel: Chinese food.
Matteo: Nothing. I’m perfect.
Can you say something more about the current music scene in Cervia / Italy?
Manuel: There are a lot of nice bands in our country as well as in the surroundings of our city, but I think everyone is having a hard time to get out of the shade. I mean it’s probably like that everywhere you go, it’s not easy starting from scratch. But I think in Italy it’s almost harder than in many other countries, and that’s mainly because of what we call “Italian music”. There’s a whole current of pop music specifically sung in Italian, and you usually grow up on that and are indirectly taught to search for Italian, spoken lyrics in songs. I think one Italian out of two gets bored very fast by music where they “can’t understand the words”. So the bands who are doing different stuff and singing in English, or not singing at all, are somewhat seen as some odd alien-weirdos around here, at least by the majority of people, those who are less interested in alternative music. If you compare this to the situation in the States or in the UK, it’s like another world altogether, there’s way more space for experimental music over there, way more people are interested in music beyond pop and electronics and there are no language barriers. Fortunately, there’s people who want to differ also around here, but we feel like we need to reach out of Italy to truly find our place.
Where can we see you live this year (concerts/tours)?
Enrico: We’ll be playing around Italy in spring and summer. Chances are high that we come to France, Portugal and other countries of Europe in autumn or early winter. Keep an eye out for it.
What are your plans for the future as a band?
Manuel: As we already said, we want to reach out of Italy. We like our country, but we feel like our place is not only here, our music is not specifically linked to the Italian audience and we want to bring it around the globe as much as we can. The first step is to go around Europe, we chose a French label (Bitume Productions) specifically to start this process.
Enrico: So anyone reading this article from another European country who might host a show for us in their city or venue or festival: yes, we are interested. You can contact us at onioroshiband@gmail.com.
How can people best support your band?
Enrico: If you enjoy our music, just take the time to talk to a friend about it. It’s so simple and yet so powerful, probably more than all the fuss happening online. If everyone reading this article does that, and they do it with someone else, our music would gain immense attention. Then if you have some money to spare, the other thing you might do to help us is buying our merch, our limited-edition vinyl in particular. It’s not cheap, but all the money you spend for our merch goes directly into the creation of new music, so it’s a straight investment into getting us to do more. We do our best to make high quality merch, and you will find some nice, unexpected surprises when you have it in your hands…
Do you have any message for your listeners?
Stop for a while, drink a big glass of water, try not to think about anything for five minutes. Then turn the lights off, and blast some crazy music, very loud, alone in your room, while your mind travels far. Whoever did that music, you will meet them on the other side.
Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well