Recently Radioactive Metal conducted an interview with TESTAMENT bassist Steve DiGiorgio, talking about his time in DEATH and currently on the Death DTA tour. Go and check it out HERE.
Current TESTAMENT bassist Steve DiGiorgio is a legendary musical journeyman whose resume would make even the most well rounded Metal veteran’s head spin… then explode. DiGiorgio was a major player in the pioneering of both the Bay Area (SADUS) and the rising early 90s death metal scenes. Taking a working vacation from his day gig, we caught up with Mr. DiGiorgio as he was terrorizing the nation playing tribute to the late, great Chuck Schuldiner as part of the Death To All tour. We were beyond stoked to discuss his time with Chuck and DEATH, the concept of Death To All, and his extensive resume. Who’s The Man? Sorry Scottie. In our News, Views, and Tunes, we go over our regional Wacken Metal Battleand tear Facebook a new one. Horns!!
ANATOMY OF I, the band – featuring vocalist/guitarist Michael Dorrian, bassist Steve DiGiorgio (SADUS, DEATH, TESTAMENT) and drummer Dirk Verbeuren (SCARVE, SOILWORK) – is proud to announce that ANATOMY OF I‘s debut album ‘SUBSTRATUM’, originally released in 2011, will be re-released by Punishment 18 Records in May 2015! It will contain bonus tracks consisting of two remixed & remastered songs and one exclusive new song!
ANATOMY OF I mastermind Michael Dorrian recently hit Final Focus Studio with engineer extraordinaire Yuma van Eekelen (EXIVIOUS, ex-PESTILENCE) manning the helm, to re-record rhythm guitars for the bonus tracks. Two play through tracks from the session can be seen below
Legendary Bay Area thrashers TESTAMENT have released the following statement:
“It is with much respect that we announce our mutual parting with bassist Greg Christian. Metal fretless bass pioneer Steve Di Giorgio will be returning to TESTAMENT. Steve previously was a member of TESTAMENT on The Gathering (1999) as well as First Strike Still Deadly (2001). He will be joining TESTAMENT on their upcoming shows in Australia on the Soundwave Festival, Japan and Mexico City. Steve will also be taking part in the new TESTAMENT album. We are looking forward to continuing the momentum you, the fans, have made possible.”
Steve DiGiorgio is an amazing bassist who worked with almost all the great metal bands such as Iced Earth, Control Denied, Testament, Sadus, Sebastian Bach and many more. He also was a part of legendary band DEATH and played metal with Chuck Schuldiner. METAL SHOCK FINLAND ‘s Mohsen Fayyazi has recently had a talk with him and asked him some questions. Some of them can be read below:
Steve mentioned Davide Tiso as ”an amazing , unique musician as well as an extraordinary person. He is a different fellow and his music is a reflection how different he is and that’s what attracted me to the project. I like a challenge to do something new…” when he was asked about his experience joining Ephel Duath.
When asked about his memories of Chuck Schuldiner and DEATH, he said: “‘I worked with Chuck on 5 of 7 Death records, and toured with him, and we were friends who would just hang out and do stuff. So I have a pretty long history with the guy. Playing with him was really enriching for my musical creativity because he had a great sense of composition and of his own creativity. And also playing in a band of that level helped me appear on the scene and pretty much made my whole career.”
Steve discussed about DEATH without Chuck: “Obviously without Chuck it’s not Death and we weren’t going out as the same Death band. We weren’t trying to be a facsimile of the real band. We’re a collection of ex Death members, we recruited a couple of replacement singers as none of us could handle the vocals. Technically the band was called Death To All just to make sure we didn’t assume anything that wasn’t rightfully ours, but we did go out representing the band Death. It was a tribute to Chuck, something we did in his memory, as friends of his. A lot of the money from the concerts went to a charity to help medical causes.”
When talking about his future plans, he said the following: “Well I’ve been in the middle of quite a list of recordings. It’s not always this way for me, but right now everything is really really busy. I have a lot of different recording projects that I’m working on simultaneously – Davide, Ephel Duath…, I think it was the first of the year. I’ve recorded some music with Roger Staffelbach and I’ve recorded with a brutal death metal project called Synesis Absorption. I’m working currently on a very epic symphonic orchestral metal album from Greece. There’s some more stuff that I need to get to. The projects are coming in at a pretty good rate this year, so it looks pretty busy. I’m sure once I’ve cleared off the list I’ll go for a long dry spell and start looking to keep busy again, but for now I’m going to enjoy being a wanted man.”
You can listen to the whole of this conversation on the audio player below:
Spinefarm Records has announced the signing of Sweden-based act SOEN, featuring Martin Lopez (ex-OPETH, AMON AMARTH drummer) and Steve DiGiorgio (bassist for TESTAMENT, DEATH, SADUS, etc.). The label will release the band’s debut album in February 2012.
Soen was initially formed by Martin Lopez and Kim Platbarzdis in 2005. Due to a number of reasons, Soen was put on ice, to be resumed with the arrival of vocalist Joel Ekelöf (WILLOWTREE) in early 2010. Later on in 2010, Steve DiGiorgio was recruited on bass and the band’s lineup was finally complete.
Soen’s debut album promises to be a unique mix of melodic and rhythmic exprementation. The album will be mixed by David Bottrill (PETER GABRIEL, TOOL, SMASHING PUMPKINS).
