Super stoked to interview Ancine! They just recently put out a dark folk album "Death Hymns: Book Of Desolation" that we absolutely love!
Q: Introduce yourself to the readers
A:Hey how’s it going? Thanks for having me. I’m Mike Giallo and I’m the sole member of Ancine.
Q: What inspired your sound?
A: My sound was quite accidental. I knew I wanted to to make a gothic form of American folk music, but I didn’t know it was going to come out as dark as it did. But I’m a very somber, negative, death-centric person so in hindsight it makes sense that that’s how my music came out. Aside from that I was influenced by folk horror movies, spaghetti westerns, and writings of HP Lovecraft, Poe, etc. I’m from New England and the greatest horror authors in the world come from here. There’s something in the air and it seeps into you.
Q: Were your instruments intentionally out of tune? Was it in post production? How did you create those unique tones?
A: Shit, I knew I should’ve invested in a tuner! Seriously though, yeah, I used a lot of very weird tunings. None of the songs are in standard, I find that rather boring. I tried all kinds of different stuff out, like tune the guitars as if they were a banjo. For instance, Cemetery Without Crosses is in “mountain minor”, which is a bluegrass banjo tuning. So that definitely adds to the weird sound. Another thing I would do is put a lot of noise and reverb in the background. There’s constantly feed back, or scraping of strings with weird effects on it, or a rhythm track completely submerged with reverb going on if you listen closely. I got that idea from Samhain. They way they utilized feedback and reverb is just incredible.
Q: Why did you use that particular clip of Vincent Price in the intro? Did you have other options that you considered?
A:I love that movie. And I thought it was just the perfect introduction summary for DEATH HYMNS. Prospero touches on every major theme prevalent throughout the album, and future albums; the world is falling apart, absolute hopelessness, and the big question is where is God? There were a lot of other quotes from that movie and from others that I also considered. I’m sure some will pop up in the future.
Q:How has the reception been for “Death Hymns:Book Of Desolation” so far?
A: I’m still working on getting it out there, but those who did hear it all have incredible things to say. Something I’ve heard by numerous different people is “this sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before”. Which as a musician, is the greatest compliment one could ever receive. I think my favorite comment somebody said was “this is giving off some real serial killer vibes”. And black metal fans have been really into it as well. There’s definitely black metal influence in there, but I didn’t think it would crossover, luckily I was wrong.
Q: This album is the first in a four part series, right? What kind of timeline are you looking at for releasing the other three?
A:If I can get two DEATH HYMNS out a year I’d be happy. We’ll see though, might be like every 8-9 months. I have an extremely busy full time job.
Q: How long did it take you to release “Book of Desolation” from its inception?
A:I started recording Halloween night 2023 and sent the songs off to get mastered early February. The recording process of future albums shouldn’t take that long though. This was a complete new experience and I was learning as I went. There was a lot of trial and error. Mostly error. Next ones should go a bit smoother.
Q: If you were an animal, which one would you be and why?
A: Whichever one has the shortest life span.
Q: Where can people follow you?
A: I’m most active on Instagram which is @ancineblues. I respond to every comment and every message so feel free to drop a line. I’m also on X(twitter) but not as active, same handle. Head over to www.ancine.info for all my socials and where to buy and stream my music.
Q: What message do you have for anyone who reads this?
A: If you ain’t sinnin’, you ain’t livin