There’s always been glimpses of true greatness with veteran symphonic metal act Visions of Atlantis, but it hasn’t really been until recently that they’ve really captured their full potential. Most notably is that of the recently released Pirates II: Armada, in which they manage to bring all the elements of bombastic symphonic metal, cinematic sequences, and genuine heart into a throttling and epic metal release. Easily the strongest release in the band’s extensive discography, we reached out to vocalist Michele ‘Meek’ Guaitoli to give us some details regarding the nuances of the band’s latest, how the band has changed over the years, fighting against notion that pirate-themed bands are usually more humor-infused, and much more.
Dead Rhetoric: How has the overall reception to Armada been now that the album is out?
Michele ‘Meek’ Guaitoli: Beyond all expectations, to be honest. It’s heartwarming and uplifting on every level. To be fair, Pirates went well. It went really well. It really made us step forward in the game, and the reception from the live shows and the press, it finally put us into the ‘major leagues’ of music. If you could make a comparison, I wouldn’t say we were always playing the b-series or second level, but we were always playing in the middle…we couldn’t make it to that higher rank.
With Pirates, we were last in line, but we started playing the real deal. We made the right moves on the visuals, the mixing, the production, and of course on the live shows, which to me matters the most. But it wasn’t until then that we started ‘the real game.’ So we felt a responsibility for this record, so we set an expectation to make our best effort and see where it goes. But we would have never expected such a strong and almost overwhelming response. Everyone is saying that Pirates was not a lucky shot. It’s that we set the bar and confirmed it.
Dead Rhetoric: How did it feel to be writing a follow-up/sequel to an album?
Guaitoli: I have to admit that at the very beginning, we were not thinking of calling it a real follow-up. Pirates was not a concept album, but rather 12 pirate stories that created this pirate environment. We thought it was cool and engaging, calling it Pirates II and following up this idea. Pirates II has 12 more stories. It’s not the same stories, it’s 12 different stories and 12 different songs. The vibes are different. You won’t find copycats from the songs from Pirates. It’s new stuff. Nothing repeats itself. In the soundscape that we create, nothing repeats itself.
There’s a consistency, but it’s not like “Monsters” was in Pirates. If you listen to Armada, the songs are going to have a heavy metal vibe but it’s new songs. There’s no song like “Tonight I’m Alive.” You won’t find a song like that on Pirates I. There is no intro like in Armada, no “Land of the Free” that bursts into song. As well as you won’t find a “Darkness Inside” in Armada. So it makes sense, since we can offer more pirate stories, and there’s enough difference to not make people think that this is just a way to copy what we did already.
Dead Rhetoric: Once you hit something that works, or an area that works for you, it seems logical to continue exploring in that area. Do you feel that works for Visions of Atlantis now? I know you have always had a taste of that theme, but it seems with these last two albums you have dug in a bit harder with it.
Guaitoli: Absolutely. I think it’s time to find ourselves and we need to keep it that way. The thing is, before Pirates, we felt a bit more of the weight on our shoulders of the music before us. This band is 24-25 years old, but the line-up that is active right now has basically nothing to do with what happened before, but we were still playing their songs and presenting ourselves live and performing music that was not written by us. Of course, Thomas Caser, the band leader, has been there from the beginning, but up until Pirates it was his band. But then we took a step forward and talked about it: we have been together for four years now…now it’s seven years that this line-up has been together. We will be together and it felt like the time was right to separate us from the past. We said thanks for what had been done, but it’s a new era.
It would have been stupid to change the name. People recognize us and know us as Visions of Atlantis. But it was time to cut ties with the past and change who we were. We did it in a way that was pretty straight-forward with the Pirates universe. The band had been flirting with that concept. You can see the pirates in the art and older songs with that theme. All the graphics were about skulls and pirates. It was there already. But it was the time to say that we are a new band. We decided to be pirates. It’s sort of like starting a franchise. There’s Pirates and Pirates II, and maybe we will do Pirates III. But from that moment on, we became detached from what had happened before. There was no reason to lean on the band as it was before.
Dead Rhetoric: Given the band’s history, did you feel that you needed to wait a few years to really do something like this, and have a stable line-up to follow through on it?
Guaitoli: Yeah, and it’s also a matter of respect for the work that had been done before. The moment that we chose to play songs that we didn’t write, we take credit for it, because we are the band. I don’t think it’s super cool. But it was the only way. There are line-up changes in every band. I don’t know how Blaze Bayley was feeling when we was going on stage with Iron Maiden, but on my end, I don’t really feel comfortable and I am under the impression that no one was comfortable with it, because of the emotional charge. The emotional load that the song has. Now that we are playing our own music, the reason I think that there is more recognition and why things are going better is because it’s our music. I think it is as simple as that. No overthinking. It carries more emotion and reaches more people. Simple.
Dead Rhetoric: Going back to what you said at the beginning, with the live show being so important. Now that you have that ownership in what you are playing, do you feel that has raised your live game up as well?
Guaitoli: Absolutely. 100%. Again because of the emotion it transmits. The moment I sing my lyrics and my melodies and Clementine sings her lyrics and her melodies, you are not only singing a song, you are singing everything that is behind that song. It takes me back to the moment of the recording, when I was in my studio creating and crafting. If I think of “The Dead of the Sea,” my brain goes back to when I was composing that melody and I remember where I was and what I was doing. I think that connection is ethereal. It’s hard to explain, but it’s an emotional load that stays with you, and people can feel that.
Dead Rhetoric: You did some pretty high quality videos for Armada. Was any of them a particular favorite to make?
Guaitoli: If you ask me personally, I am totally in love with “Monsters.” I am in love with that song. I have a bit of an issue with computer graphics, because I’m so used to watching Marvel movies and Netflix stuff. Right now, I feel like the graphics bar is so freaking high, but it’s so expensive to reach that level. But that’s what people are getting used to. Watching movies from the ‘80s seems like it would be a disaster right now. But when you look at movies like Back to the Future or some of the big movies from ‘81 or ‘82, it doesn’t matter because the story is there. So that’s our concept.
We want to give value to the creation of the storyline in a way that is realistic rather than being photorealistic. People enjoy watching Pirates fighting on a ship much more than the perfect band video with a performance. It becomes boring. So we do what we can afford. “Monster” has no special effects and I love it. There’s fire! I love the mirror scene. Everything was organic. I truly wish that someday we would have the budget to rent a pirate ship and organize a real fight on a ship.
Dead Rhetoric: There’s that bar that has been raised, if you just have the band perform on a video, it’s not really enough anymore because anyone can do that. You really do have to do more to fight for space with something different.
Guaitoli: There are some extremely good YouTubers out there with professional material and they can perform on their own. So if you are a band with a label behind you, with a cd to sell, why don’t you do more than something that can be done in an amazing way, but musicians online? I would expect more. We are in 2024, it’s not the ‘80s anymore. When I watched videos then, seeing Bon Jovi performing live on MTV, that was cool because a band could only do one or two videos per album. It was magic. But now, everyone can make a good video with a little investment and some great skills in video making. Bands need to raise the bar higher. Otherwise, why should I listen to you? There are so many people online doing it on their own, and they deserve more credit.
Dead Rhetoric: Discuss the dynamic between yourself and the rest of the band. How has it evolved over time in Visions of Atlantis?
Guaitoli: The moment in which I started playing in Visions of Atlantis, I was playing with strangers. It was five people who I had never met before. The first show, I substituted for Siegfried Samer for four summer shows opening for Kamelot. We rehearsed for about an hour the day before. I had never met them before. The connection was only online. So it was like playing with strangers. Now I am playing with my family. It’s crazy how much has changed in seven years, and we have been through so much together. We have been performing 80-90 shows per year, we have been sick together, we have caught ourselves falling. I remember in a tour in the US, Thomas fell and cut his knee. We went to the hospital, and it was not as easy for a European to go without insurance, so we went together. We have had fights and arguments, we have cried and had joy together. We watch movies together. There’s’ so much together. I see them more than I see my sister!
It says a lot about the connection over the years and you can hear it in the music. I feel that if you listen to Wanderers, our first record together, and there are great songs. “Heroes of the Dawn” is one of my favorites to play live, but it was like two people were put together and somehow with the aid of technology, and someone made it work. Now you can take our live takes, publish them, and it’s already great.
Dead Rhetoric: There’s a lot of more parody-flavored bands with a pirate-theme. With embracing more of the pirate identity of the band, were you afraid that some might not take you more seriously?
Guaitoli: [Laughs] That’s what we see in the eyes of the people who have never seen us when we play a live show. We come in dressed as pirates and people are like, “Is it carnival? Is it Halloween again?” [laughs] So I totally understand what you mean. But our way of looking at this gimmick bit is a bit different compared to many others. For us, it’s about detachment from reality. I think that in the society of 2024, where people are so busy and always in a rush, they are constantly bombarded with information. People can’t even look at a video that is a minute and a half long. The algorithm of Instagram and TikTok limits you to 30 seconds because that the maximum time you have to grab someone. So how do you make people focus for four minutes of a song?
If you think of it, this happens on several fields. Video games, movies, books. You need to make people believe that they are somewhere else, that they are detached from reality. Storytelling is a perfect way to make it happen. Think of the Marvel movies. Think of The Hulk. The Hulk gets really pissed and becomes big and green. If I tell this to a regular person who has no idea, they will be like, “are you crazy?” This is unrealistic, but if you make it right, you make people believe that its possible. That universe is a different universe. Whatever is told, you will believe it, because in that context, it’s real. You can have the Earth, cybertechnology, Superman, Spiderman, and all these things that are detached from reality. But in that reality its true. So our way of thinking was to create a universe in which people can believe that this pirate universe is real. If we tell you to fight the monsters inside of you, people will listen in a different way and approach, it’s a different type of attention.
So we have to be consistent. It’s difficult because you have to be on-point with the videos, you have to be on-point with the covers and pictures, because the moment that we show a microphone in the video, it’s out of context. You can’t show the amps or stage. It has to be realistic in the pirate universe and realistic in that reality. But if we make it, people will listen to you. That’s why we decided to go the pirate way.
Dead Rhetoric: You were in the US this past spring and have been over a few times now in recent years. Are you trying to prime up for a full headlining tour?
Guaitoli: I can tell you that it’s happening. April 2025 [laughs]. We are already working on it, and the venues we have been playing they have been supporting us. We have already started working on the first ‘real’ headline run, because we did a short run in 2023 with smaller venues. It was necessary to give Visions of Atlantis a value in the US market, so it was absolutely fundamental even if it wasn’t a big tour. But after having been there so many times, this is the right way. It’s not just us pushing it. It looks like the people in the US and Canada believe in us as well, so it’s going to happen next year in April 2025.
Dead Rhetoric: So what are you planning for the rest of 2024?
Guaitoli: Now it’s time to tour and bring the record live, because we belong to the live stage. The idea is to bring the show up, in terms of production. We have a big ship structure in Europe that I think would be difficult to bring to the US to increase our production over there, but we want to create a cinematic performance, in which you don’t just see a band play, but you are going to a port or ship and entering this pirate universe so we are consistent with the messages. The effort we are going to put around it – in Europe it will be the biggest tour we have ever done, and hopefully with fingers crossed we can play the same show in the US.
It’s time to play festivals now, and then in September/October we will be busy in Europe. Then we will be in America. Then my hope is that we can make it to Australia and New Zealand. We haven’t been there before and the requests are rising, so I’d like that.
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