Nat:   First off I'd like to tell you how much I appreciated your debut album. Great songs, great melodies, great fun. Where did you hide for so long?

Alessio:   Eh eh, thank you very much!!! I really love the album too... :) Well, Airborn exists for 6 years now... yes, we started in 1996... until 2002 we just stood in the shadow, songwriting, arranging, playing... then, when we felt the material had reached a good status, we tried to get a deal in Germany and to find a great producer for the album, both things are quite hard to obtain... but we never had hurry and in the end here we are! We made it!

Nat:   All songs music & lyrics by: Alessio Perardi. Vocals, guitars, keyboards: Alessio Perardi. You put a lot of time, work and engagement into Airborn - what does it mean to you?

Alessio:   And you didn't mention I also did the artwork and the video production!!! ;)
You see: Airborn means everything for me, music truly is my life... I also do other musical works, for movies & so on and I played guitar in many bands, for more than 10 years, but Airborn is something special: it's a project that absorbs me fully. I spend entire days songwriting an arranging keyboards. I really love it... also doing vocals: it's something that I started doing because we didn't want more than four people in the band, but now I really like it and I really feel good in what I do.

Nat:   Your musical style is close to German Speed Metal heroes like Gamma Ray, Iron Savior or early Blind Guardian (you don't need to read the promo-info to hear that ;) ). Are those your personal preferences or idols in Metal?

Alessio:   Yes! Gamma Ray & the other power metal bands in Germany are the best!!! I love the speed, the choruses, the precision, the positive feel of the music... they got something special! Kai Hansen and Dirk Schlaechter are killer songwriters too, but I could say the same of Piet or the guys of Blind Guardian, not to mention Heaven's Gate that was one of my favorite bands ever. Of course I also like old school english stuff like Priest, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard or US power metal acts like Jag Panzer and Virgin Steele, but the German scene is still my favorite.

Nat:   How big has Piet Sielck's influence on your debut album been? Many passages sound a lot like he had his fingers in the arrangements..

Alessio:   Piet helped us a lot, especially with his trade mark choruses. In choruses you can really hear his touch, for the rest he didn't change our songs very much, probably because I really love what Piet does with Iron Savior, so we did many things from the start the way he wanted them to be.
The only song we really re-arranged with Piet was "Wings", because we weren't fully happy with the demoversion we did and, by the way, I wanted to do a duet with Piet, so I said: "Piet, I want to change this one a little bit, maybe we can do a duet here..." and he said: "OK!" So it happened: I did a duet with one of my favorite singers!!! And "Wings" turned out to be one of the highlights of the album (at least in my opinion).
Working with Piet anyway puts you on the risk of sounding like Iron Savior with another singer. I think we're almost safe from this danger... he "germanized" us a little, but our own style was preserved.

Nat:   What was it like to produce with Piet Sielck, how did you get in contact with him at all?

Alessio:   It was a great experience for us! Piet is a great producer and, even if he made us work hard, the atmosphere was very relaxed, we talked & laughed a lot, had good coffee... it was cool. I heard some people say Piet is a real tyrant in studio, but that's not true... of course, if he thinks something is a real crap in what you want to do, be sure that idea won't reach the final mix, no matter how much you insist... but that's producer's job, and usually when you listen to the final result, maybe a couple of days later, you must admit he was right!
Getting in touch with Piet wasn't easy, he's very busy with Iron Savior and a lot of other productions... I first met him in Milano some years ago at Gods Of Metal festival, then we talked by email from time to time, until (2 years after our first meeting...) we decided a date for the production.

Nat:   Very contrasting to your powerfull and very speedy songs, the intro and outro remind me of electro-pop acts like "A-Ha" or something like that. What is the idea behind them?

Alessio:   Oh yes! They're very strange... we wanted to give the idea of a mechanized paranoid world with that electronic feel as a contrast to the true-metal rebel spirit of "Against The World". It was half inspired by the great Vangelis' end theme from Blade Runner soundtrack and half from Alan Parsons Project.

Nat:   The promo disc has a black bottom side, will the version in the stores look like the same? Is there a special reason for this design?

Alessio:   It's our label Remedy Records' trade mark, they do all the cd's like that, of course also the CD in the store will be like that... I really like it and it works great with the CD painting of the burning planet. I'm totally happy with the whole appearence of the final product... artwork, CD paint, digipack: everything pleases me!

Nat:   What are your aims with Airborn?

Alessio:   To become rich'n'famous? :) Well, a little more serious now... our aim has always been to do good quality music and to have a good distribution for it... I think we're going the right way... and we're already working on our second album!!!
The most important thing in my opinion, is to show that - people may like or dislike what we do - we're a band with a personal vision and a style, not just "another" Rhapsody or Stratovarius clone...

Nat:   Thanks for your time and patience and good luck for the future!

Alessio:   Thanks to you for the interview... all the best for your very cool webzine!