Azrael (Italy)

Interview with Ed (guitars)

https://www.facebook.com/azrael80smetal

Azrael are a heavy metal band from Rapallo, Italy. Formed in 1988, went silent for years, and now we return on 1st May 2026 with a self-produced EP Clockwork Abyss. Their latest single “Chinatown” immediately grabbed my attention. Hence, recently, I sat down to talk to the band’s guitarist Ed (Edoardo Napoli) in order to look back on Azrael’s remarkable 35-year journey, a long hiatus, new EP, and about their exciting future plans. Please read the interview below and get exclusive insight into the life of the Italian sextet.

Metal Revolution: Ciao Azrael, can you take us back to 1988 when the band was formed? What were the initial plans for the band?
Azrael: Late 1988, Liguria, on the coast between Genoa and Rapallo. Ale Arbocò put up handwritten notes in the local record shops looking for musicians on the same wavelength. That was how things happened back then: no internet, no socials, just a flyer pinned next to the new Maiden import. The plan, if you can even call it a plan, was very simple. Play heavy metal, write our own songs, get on a stage, have a laugh while doing it. Nobody was thinking five years ahead. We just wanted to plug in.

MR: Who came up with a moniker Azrael? Why did you choose this name?
Azrael: Honestly, after all these years nobody remembers exactly who threw the name into the room first. What we do remember is that the reference was musical, not theological. It came from the Crimson Glory song “Azrael” rather than the angel of death imagery itself. Crimson Glory was massive for us at the time, that record is still untouchable, and the name just felt right on a flyer. Once it stuck, it stuck.

MR: Following a long hiatus, you’re now back with a vengeance and a new line-up, but would you tell us the reason for your absence from the scene, and why this come-back?
Azrael: By the end of 1994 the band ran out of road. Different lives pulling in different directions, which is what happens to most bands at that age. Arbocò, Mortola and Lijoi carried on briefly with an instrumental project that featured a very young Pier Gonella on guitar. Then in early 1995 Andy Lijoi had to step away from music entirely for health reasons. He came back to the instrument from scratch in 2002 and slowly rebuilt his playing.

The comeback started taking shape about two and a half years ago. I had been sidelined from playing for a while and got the itch again to put a band together. A first attempt fell apart for logistical reasons, so the natural next move was to dig out the old material and bring it to Andy, who happened to be available at the right moment. The first line-up of this new run included Francesco Schenone on drums and Ivano Lavezzini on keys, and we send them our best. The actual idea of bringing the Azrael name back came along that journey, once Andy started pulling out the old repertoire alongside the new songs. After one more line-up shift, we settled on the six of us. The moment we realised the songs had real bite in the rehearsal room, and that everyone was pulling in the same direction without any drama, we said “right, this might actually work”.

MR: What is your current line-up and are you pleased with co-operation between all six members?
Azrael: The line-up is Federico Travi on vocals, Edoardo Napoli and Andy Lijoi on guitars, Mik Radogna on keyboards, Gianluca Eroico on bass and Daniele Di Tullio on drums. With Federico, Gianluca and Mik there was already a long-standing friendship in place, so finding them was just a matter of asking. The real stroke of luck was Daniele: we caught him playing live, knew straight away he was the right drummer for this band, and walked up to him after the gig. Six people in a room, and yes, it works. Everyone brings something of their own, nobody is precious about their parts, and the songs always come first. That’s the only way a band of this size stays together past the second rehearsal.

MR: Recently you recorded your debut EP Clockwork Abyss. Would you be kind to introduce it? There’re five tracks on it, right?
Azrael: Five tracks, around twenty-five minutes total. The running order is “Nemesys”, “Chinatown”, “Call Me Rover”, “My Lost Delight” and “No More Time”. It’s our debut EP, out 1st May 2026 on Bandcamp. We wrote it, arranged it, recorded it, mixed it and mastered it ourselves, which means every choice on the record is ours, for better or worse. Some of the songs are brand new, others are older pieces that have been with us for a long time and finally got the version they deserved. The aim was straightforward: capture the kind of records we grew up with. Twin guitars, vocals up front, songs that move from A to B without padding. No filler, no fifteen-minute prog detours.

MR: How would you describe the sound on this new EP, and which song from Clockwork Abyss resonates with you personally the most and why?
Azrael: The sound is classic heavy metal played by people who actually lived through that era. We tracked the drums entirely the old way, with seventeen microphones carefully phase-aligned, no triggers, no samples replacing the kit. We wanted a drum sound the size of a house, achieved honestly. The references in the production chair were Roberto Falcao and Andy Sneap, but the goal was never to copy them. The goal was to sound like an eighties band making an eighties record, in 2026, with the tools we have today.

As for the song that hits hardest personally, the answer splits in two. There’s a very intimate connection with “No More Time”, written when I was sixteen, and which works almost as a spiritual testament. It’s about mental health, and about how heavy treatments can dissolve time itself, turning the memories that should stay sharp for a lifetime into ethereal clouds in which you find yourself in a dematerialised reality. Then there’s “Call Me Rover”, which is the one the whole band shares. Every single time we hit that chorus together in the room, we get goosebumps from sheer joy. That kind of feeling is rare and you don’t take it for granted.

MR: Ahead of the EP, the lead single “Chinatown” has been unveiled over on your Youtube channel. What can you tell about this particular song? What inspired you to choose this title? Is it a metaphor for something else?
Azrael: “Chinatown” was originally written when I was twenty, during a period spent working on instrumental material for soundtracks. The first version was pure eighties soundscape: gated reverb, a Yamaha CP80, electric guitars through a Boston. The skeleton survived all these years intact, and once it landed in the band it took a different shape, the lyrics were written in the first instance by me and then carefully reshaped by Federico, while the rest of us worked on an arrangement built around what serves the song.

The title is absolutely a metaphor. It’s an allegory of everything that gets sold to us as “too good to be true”. ‘Chinatown’ as the idea of a district full of colour, possibility, spice and adventure, with something darker waiting underneath: a trap you don’t walk out of once you’re in. One way ticket. The lyrics put it bluntly in the outro: “you won’t leave Chinatown”. It can be read as addiction, or seduction, or any place, real or otherwise, that sells you the dream and then closes the door behind you. Everyone will recognise their own ‘Chinatown’.

MR: Do you agree with those describing your sound as ‘rooted in the classic heavy metal of the eighties’ and bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Queensrÿche, Savatage etc.?
Azrael: Hard to argue with that list. We grew up on those records. Maiden and Priest are in the DNA of anyone who picked up a guitar in that decade. Queensrÿche taught us that you could be heavy and still write proper songs with proper vocal lines, which is something a lot of bands forget. Savatage showed us that drama and weight can sit on the same track without one cancelling the other. We don’t try to sound like any of them on purpose, but if those names come up when people listen, it’s a compliment we’ll happily take.

MR: How does your creative process work? What’s the creative process like when you make a new song?
Azrael: The standard route is that someone brings in a song that’s already structurally complete, with a clear shape from intro to outro. That demo gets shared on a common storage so everyone can listen at home and start sketching their own parts before rehearsal. Once we hit the rehearsal room, we apply the collective surgery: things get cut, added, rearranged, always in service of the song, never of the individual part. The work is balanced, nobody is sitting on the bench. Keyboards usually come in a second wave, even though some songs already arrive with an embryonic keys idea, and Mik then carves his proper lines around the rest of the arrangement.

MR: Has the lyrical content changed since the late 80s? Where do you get inspiration for writing lyrics and who’s the main songwriter? Or do you all participate equaly?
Azrael: The writing is shared, often starting from a story or a real situation that one of us tells the others, which then gets turned into something allegorical for the lyric. Inspiration sits between personal experience, observation, and the kind of imagery that classic metal has always lived on. As for whether the lyrics have changed since the late eighties, yes, in a way they have. Back then there was more strict adherence to the codes of the genre, and the energy was very much the energy of being young. Today, experience pushes us to explore wider territory, and the passage of time inevitably brings a darker shade to the writing. Same band, same spirit, more layers underneath.

MR: What is the most misunderstood thing about the 80s metal scene, looking back from today’s perspective?
Azrael: That it was all hairspray, spandex and stadiums. That’s the postcard version, the one MTV sold abroad. The scene we actually lived in was the opposite. Tape trading, hand-photocopied fanzines, gigs in tiny clubs, posters glued to lamp posts at three in the morning. Bands helped each other out, sound engineers did favours, and people drove four hours in a freezing van to play forty minutes for a hundred kids who knew every word. That’s the part that gets lost when people only remember the videos.

MR: Do you still have any of the old physical fanzines or letters that featured your band?
Azrael: Whatever survived from those years has been gathered and is now part of the foundation this current chapter is built on, and the next one too. It’s not just nostalgia in a cardboard box: some of that material genuinely fed back into what Clockwork Abyss became, while keeping the focus firmly on writing brand new songs from scratch. If we had to pick one piece worth mentioning in connection with the EP, we’d point to “My Lost Delight”. That song went through a major transformation compared to its first nineties version, but it kept its identity all the way through. We’re really proud of where it landed.

MR: Now, back to the present day – what obstacles or challenges do you encounter when it comes to getting your music out there and heard by potential new fans?
Azrael: The main obstacle isn’t recording or distribution any more. Anyone with a laptop can do that. The real challenge is being heard at all. There’s an enormous amount of music coming out every single day, and most of it disappears within twenty-four hours because the algorithms have already moved on. We try to do this the old way as much as possible: direct contact with people who actually care about this kind of music, fanzines and webzines like yours, word of mouth, gigs. Bandcamp helps, because it still treats music like music and not like content.

MR: How can people reach your band & music? Feel free to promote your platforms here.
Azrael: Everything starts from azrael80smetal.bandcamp.com, where Clockwork Abyss is up from 1st May. The lead single “Chinatown” went live on our YouTube channel on 24th April, and on 8th May at 6pm Italian time we drop the lyric video for “Nemesys”, so keep an eye on the channel. All the other links sit in one place at http://azrael80smetal.com. Drop a message, leave a comment, send a tape. We read everything.

MR: Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. Would you like to add anything to the readers of Metal Revolution?
Azrael: Just a thank you. To Metal Revolution for asking proper questions instead of the usual ten-line questionnaire. To everyone who’s followed us for three decades and is still here. To anyone reading this who’s discovering us today for the first time. The EP is short, the road back has been long, and we hope you’ll find something on Clockwork Abyss that makes you reach for the volume knob. See you down front.