Doomed Confessionary: Niccolò & Raven (Boleskine House)
Photos by Giulia Frump Gualazzi
Boleskine House is an atmospheric black/doom metal duo based out of Milan, Italy. Their debut album »Miserabilist Blues« was released on April 17th, 2024 via Masked Dead Records.
The record is about a poignant and elusive, yet seemingly endless moment, without a horizon. Time, beloved places, people known, people lost, fragile promises in the golden days of youth, broken dreams and impossible desires are amalgamated into an undying fog.
These are the main themes the duo faces with black metal influenced by atmospheric sounds, full of personality and drama that deal with 90s doom and gothic, but also with outside genres such as shoegaze.
Can you say a few words about your band?
Raven: Boleskine House is composed of Nicco, guitarist and songwriter and I, Raven, I’m the singer and writer of our lyrics and concepts of our music.
We started this project in 2020 because of our love for the music that bonded us since we were teenagers and to exorcise the negative experiences of our lives until the time of the beginning of the composition of our debut, »Miserabilist Blues«. I like to say that our first record is the manifest of our survival.
What was the biggest challenge for the band?
Niccolò: Actually there was no particular challenge, from the very beginning of »Miserabilist Blues« it was all quite natural. When time allowed we would get down to composing. We had not given ourselves specific deadlines, and the only goal was to create an EP or album that contained all the ideas we had been accumulating for so long. Here, the most impactful part was the actual recording of the songs, which took place in a piecemeal fashion due to larger forces.
What can you be most proud of so far?
Niccolò: I know it may be obvious, but the thing I’m most proud of is how the whole album sounds, one track after another. It’s the second full-length I’ve composed in my life and the first in this genre, so for me it’s already a huge achievement to have made it this far with Raven.
Raven: I am proud to have created an album with my lifelong best friend.
I am happy that it is a mix of genres that I love beyond the forms of underground metal that Nicco and I have always listened to together and that makes »Miserabilist Blues« something unique to me.
It is a complex and dark record, not easy to assimilate and understand, the message comes after a few listens and I find it totally sincere, because the emotions and meanings we have painted within this picture are deep and very intimate.
What was your biggest regret?
Niccolò: I would have liked to have started creating music with Raven many years earlier. Unfortunately, many personal insecurities meant that I did not feel comfortable composing music until 2018.
Raven: The only thing I regret is the inability at the moment to bring our music live, we would need at least 3 more components and the time to be able to do that.
What was the best concert/tour so far and why?
Niccolò: »Miserabilist Blues« is our very first studio work and unfortunately we do not currently have the opportunity to perform live.
What was the biggest surprise on the music scene for you?
Niccolò: I think it was the summer of 2013 when I was reading Metal Hammer and saw a mini review of »Griseus« by Aquilus, a project I had never heard of. When I went to YouTube to hear what it was about, I was fucking shocked. It perfectly mixed my needs for classical music and extreme metal. For me that was one of those discoveries you make a few times in your life.
Raven: My life has changed many times because of music that came out long before I was born. But recently a record that has really impressed me is Sumac’s »The Healer«, from the genius of Aaron Turner, who I consider an extremely interesting musician with a way of looking at music in a non-conformist and sincere way, I would really like to see them play live, I consider Isis’ »Panopticon« a life-changing album and anything Aaron Turner does is worth listening to.
What is currently in your heavy musical rotation?
Niccolò: In the past year, in the extreme metal sphere, I have been inspired by listening to such things as the album »Master’s Murmur« and »Rare Field Ceiling« (Yellow Eyes), »The Agony & Ecstasy Of Watain« (Watain), 1349, »Bellum II« (Aquilus), Satyricon, Opeth and various other artists.
Raven: As I said, »The Healer«! By Sumac, about new releases.
Lately I’ve been going back to listening to a lot of Sleep, Electric Wizard and Kyuss! They are such important bands that I used to listen when I was in highschool among all the American alternative rock music that I always listened to!
What was the best advice you’ve ever been given as a musician?
Niccolò: One afternoon, many years ago, my classical guitar teacher Roberto Lonoce told me: “Music, like the musical instrument you play, cannot be your whole life, because if one day something were to happen to prevent you from playing, you would stop living.”
It often happens that, while composing or listening again to something I have already composed, I am no longer convinced by anything and feel useless, gripped by discouragement. In those cases, Roberto’s memory helps me get out of the downward spiral.
What are your guilty pleasures?
Niccolò: Sure: I fuckin’ love »Insomniac« by Green Day, I have listened to it a thousand times.
Raven: I am always very precise with what I listen to, especially about metal, there are things that I cannot hear even admitting that there is good in every genre, of course.
But every once in a while when I don’t want to listen to something that has some weight for me, I listen to 2000s radio stuff that puts me in a good mood and reminds me of lightness from childhood hahaha.
Can you say something more about current music scene in Milan?
Niccolò: I have lived in Milan for 27 years, and I find that this city, contrary to what people perhaps say, is not at all suitable for the proliferation of a real extreme metal music scene. Milan is a dispersive, and stressful city. I know that in the smaller towns orbiting this city, things work differently and musicians find each other more easily. In all these years, the only music scene I have experienced consists of Raven, his friends who supported Boleskine House, Matteo Balzarini of Marea, and members of the former Landscape Of Zeroes.
What are your plans for the future as a band?
Niccolò: Our plans are to write more music, as long as there is really something to say.
How can people best support your band?
If you would like to support us, we and Masked Dead Records are very pleased to offer you a very graphically polished Digipack of »Miserabilist Blues« with interesting visual content, along with our new t-shirt bearing a brand new graphic!
Here are some links:
maskedeadrecords.bandcamp.com | maskeddeadrecords.com
Do you have any message for your listeners?
Niccolò: I hope that our music can continue to inspire you and accompany you along your journey. New music has already been written and when we are ready, we will be happy to share new emotions with you. Truly endless thanks to all the people who believed in Boleskine House, supported us and will want to do so in the near future!
Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well