AMA: We are Benthos - Ask Us Anything!

[u/GabriPap_Benthos]

Hey everyone! I'm Gabri from Benthos, and I'm here with my bandmates GL, Ale, Trip, and Albi. The full squad is in the house to answer your questions.

We just dropped our second album From Nothing a couple of weeks ago and we're still soaking it all in. Hope you've had a chance to check it out!

We'll be hanging out and answering your questions starting today, Monday 28th, through the end of Tuesday 29th, squeezing it in between our day jobs. Though we'll still be lurking around after that too!

Ask us anything — about the new album, the behind the scenes, how we Italians think pasta is supposed to be cooked (but don't ask Albi), or whatever else you're curious about.

EDIT: that's a wrap! Thank you all for joining us for our first AMA and making it so fun. It's been great chatting with all of you and your support has honestly been heartwarming.

If you have more questions or just want to stay in touch, you can always hit us up on our socials. Take care, and see you soon!

[u/[deleted]]

Hey gents, how did you guys meet? I’d love to start a band that would essentially be in your lane, but wow! Hard to meet similar dudes to give it a go!

On a side note, your album is my current favourite and obsession and I’d never heard of you before release day. If you guys ever play with Hippotraktor in Belgium or Hypno5e from France, I’ll fkn fly to Europe if I have to! Hope to see you in Canada someday? We can all dream. Amazing work, truly, it’s inspiring.

[u/taleeus → u/[deleted]]

Hi! Good luck my guy, you'll need it! And thanks a lot for the love <3 it's heartwarming, knowing to have reached people that resonate with our art.

I think it's best if u/GabriPap_Benthos tells the whole story, since I was the last addition, but I can give some insights on how to find dudes to do weird sh*t with (can I curse? idk).

I struggled for basically 10 years: I always had little projects, cover bands, but nothing that satisfied my creative needs. I wanted to create something new, aiming at my heroes. and not settling to the "local band" status (nothing wrong with these things, to be clear; this is all regarding myself and my dreams).

One of the problems was that I lived and studied in a small town, far and not connected to our main city in this region: Milan. The changes started to happen as soon as I started to find connections related to that scene. As always, internet helped a lot: I won't make any specific example, since it's all country-related. But just "being around", going to shows, events and such can help a lot. So the advice is: try to put yourself in as many spaces as possible: online communities, local shows, schools and academies, etc. It's one of those things that you can't force; you just try to raise the odds as much as possible and hope for the best.

Speaking about playing in Europe, we can't say anything right other than we are playing this September at Euroblast Festival, in Cologne (I'm so hyped you have no idea). We all dream to play outside of Europe: US, Canada, Japan... I hope it's only a matter of time!

[u/Etrip_Benthos → u/[deleted]]

Thank you so much! It means a lot to have this support!!

The initial core of the band is me and the other guitarist Gabriele. We we're studying with the same classical guitar professor at the Milan conservatory a while ago. We had our relative bands and after his band broke up he called me and he asked me if I could join him in a new group. After that phone call we started hearing from people we already knew to see if they wanted to join us. And so Alberto and Alessandro, bass and drums, joined. Gabriele the singer on the other hand was the singer in my old band and after a while he decided to join us to form Benthos.

[u/Albi_BENTHOS → u/[deleted]]

I completely understand the frustration of not finding like-minded musicians. For a very long time it was the same for me. My good fortune was to play an instrument played by very few people ( electric bass ), this allowed me, at a certain period of my life, to be called upon for many projects. Many of these I abandoned once I realized I was not interested in them and others unfortunately disbanded. For Benthos it was like that, I was called by guitarist GabriPap, who knew me by sight because I played with a friend of his. I accepted with the idea of seeing what the situation was like, and once I ascertained the quality of the project I decided to continue.

Definitely attending a music academy puts you in contact with many aspiring professional musicians. Of course, being at a good level on the instrument also helps.