Interview with WHITE WIDDOW's guitarist Enzo Almanzi

Hailing from Melbourne Australia, White Widdow was formed in 2008 by charismatic front man Jules along with Bassist Trent and Guitar virtuoso Enzo. From its inception the vision was always to write and perform 80's Arena style melodic rock and hard edged AOR inspired by artists such as White Sister, Survivor, Treat, Dokken, Aviator, Bon Jovi and Australia's own Roxus.

What follows next is an interview with Enzo Almanzi (guitars). You can read some really interesting things that Enzo told to HeavyParadise.



-First of all, I would like to congratulate you for your debut album. I have to say that it is an excellent piece of melodic hard rock. It really rocked my world!

Thanks! I can't begin to tell you how fantastic it is to hear you like it in Greece!

-Can you tell me a few things about the birth of White Widdow and the creation of this superb album?

Well, White Widdow have been around as a live band for just over 2 years now, from conception.
We're a bunch of guys who had mostly met through playing in live bands in Melbourne's music scene over the last 5 to 8 years. I was in a Van Halen tribute band called "X Halen" for years with Jim where we got to know Jules and Trent from their original band The Deadthings - often playing together on the same bills. One night after a show I asked Jules if he would be interested in working together in a creative capacity and within a few days he called me with the idea of forming Australia's first AOR band in many years. I was pretty damn excited with the idea and from there the three of us (including Trent) quickly recruited Jules's brother Xav on keys, an already established song writer and performer, and later replaced our original drummer with Jim. We quickly began rehearsing and writing, while playing originals and AOR covers around our major Australian cities.
We were very fortunate to have had a well received, self produced EP last year that found its way to the AOR Heaven label in Germany. We were signed shortly after, then began recording the tracks here in Melbourne at two local recording studios. The tracks were then sent to Sweden to be mixed and mastered, then back to AOR Heaven in Germany for packaging and distribution.
In short, I think the album very clearly represents the initial vision we had a couple of years ago, combined with a some light flavours of each of our own individual influences.

-I saw that the mighty Martin Kronlund is the producer of the album. Was his contribution helpful?

Martin mixed and mastered the tracks in Sweden, with our vision of the end product as a guide. We couldn't have been happier hearing the mixing results Martin sent us and we're really grateful to have worked with someone who is so in touch with our style of music.

-A contarct with the record label AOR HEAVEN is a pretty good deal! It seems that AOR HEAVEN hit the bull's eye with you guys!!! :-)

Wow, thank you very much! That's a great compliment to us! We've been fans of many of the bands on AOR Heaven for years and we're overwhelmed being signed to them. AOR Heaven have been really great to work with and very helpful.

-Is there a main songwriter in White Widdow or the songwritting is a whole band result?

All of our music is written by Jules, myself, Xav & Trent. Each of us have worked tightly together to write and produce each song on the album. I think we're a great songwriting team, as we work really well together and usually nut out new songs quite quickly, and we're all very pleased with the ends results.

-Are there any songs from the album that you like more? For me the "Broken Heart...." is a song that could easily appear in any DANGER DANGER album. A fantastic tune!

I'm glad you like that particular song. We just shot a video for "Broken Hearts" only yesterday!
I love all the songs we wrote for this album. One of my personal favorites is definitely Spirit Of Fire. I'm also really pleased with the way Fire & Ice developed as the music was a combination of music I'd had for years, new music I wrote right after a short interstate tour late last year and once the rest of the band added their parts I was blown away! We play all the songs live at our shows, and at the moment we seem to get the biggest crowd response playing Broken Hearts Wont Last Forever and the 3 songs from our EP.

-Can you tell me about your influences? From what I've heard I think that the melodic rock scene of the 80's early 90's must be a major impact to your sound.

Although we're all big fans of the melodic rock from the 80's and early 90's, each of us have slightly different tastes and influences. Bands like Journey, Van Halen, FM, White Sister, early Bon Jovi, Treat, Dokken have been major influences on us. Jules is a walking encyclopedia on all things AOR, he travels overseas at least once a year to see his favorite bands live. Trent is also a big AOR and hard rock fan. Trent along with myself grew up as big fans of the unmasked 80's Kiss stuff. He's also a big Pretty Maids fan! Jim's favourite bands and influences are Van Halen, Rush and Dream Theater. Xav's music influences are quite varied and cover many styles of music, and he often adds ideas that work really well to our songs. One of my biggest influences is Van Halen, but I've also always loved bands like Savatage, King Diamond, Rush and of course many AOR bands.

-How do you see the melodic rock scene of today? I' m asking this cause more and more 'new' bands are releasing great albums, but, also, some of the so called 'old' bands are back with some very good comeback albums!

Worldwide, I see the melodic rock scene is thriving in 2010! As you pointed out, there are some incredible recent melodic releases from new bands such as H.E.A.T and Crash Diet. It's great to see classic bands like Treat have released amazing albums this year too. I was recently turned on a band from Greece called Out Loud, who's debut album was very impressive. In Australia we've had a real drought since the early 90's when Roxus were around. There's a great new Australian melodic rock in Melbourne band called Spitfire Rain, who are fronted by an awesome female vocalist.

-From this year's releases are there any that impressed you more?

I really like the new RATT album, I also really like what Im hearing from the Crash Diet & HEAT albums. I just bought the new Treat album which is also high on my list for album of the year!

-Are we going to see White Widdow live? What are your touring plans?

Our immediate plans are to celebrate our album release locally with a launch party in a few weeks then we're supporting Ted Poley from Danger Danger on his Australian tour next month. From there we'll continue writing new material and playing live. Ultimately we would love to tour Europe in the near future! And playing in Greece would be amazing!

-Closing I would like to wish you good luck with your album and thanx a lot for sharing these things with Heavy Paradise.

Thank you! It was a real pleasure being interviewed by Heavy Paradise!