Bologna is the lively historic capital of the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy.

Bologna's university dates back to the 11th Century (1088), and is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, in the World. Since its creation it has been a home to some famous personalities in various areas of our Society: Petrarca, Eco, Dante... and Collina!

Modern stuff? ODD, a Harcore band from this picturesque city... read all about it, below.

First of all, thank you for your willingness to answer some questions, and for having immediately acceded to my request. We will have to start, of course, at the beginning... tell me a little bit about how ODD came about.

ODD: Hi Daniel, thank you for getting in touch with us. We’re glad about this interview. ODD’s birth is the most classical one. We’ve been friends for a while and about one year ago Pulce (drummer) said “I wanna start a new band”. Noise (vocals) and Pilvia (bass) joined him and Frank (guitars), who plays with other Noise’s band, Siege Stompers, jumped on the train too. After a couple of practice sessions we realized that it was working so we decided to keep it real.

Starting from Frank, that’s the one that usually writes the riffs, and Pulce for the drums parts, we all work and think a lot for every song to achieve the composition that we like best. Probably, regarding what we have written so far, this is just the beginning of our musical path as a band.

I discovered you by chance, when searching a specific YouTube channel, and the immediacy of your themes grabbed me. There is controlled violence and a sense of melody, immense. It's not just HC, there are "brushstrokes" of something else... is it really important for you that the melody guides your sound?

ODD: You’re right. There’s some kind of melody in our music. We played with plenty of more “classical” hardcore bands in the past (some of us still do) so we agreed that it would have been funnier if we played something different this time. Every time we write a new song, we try to have an old school approach but at the same time we also try to avoid doing the same things that you can hear on thousands of other records. Maybe we’re just getting old...

"Demo" is your presentation to the World, right?! But before ODD, there was already experience on your part with other bands, I suppose.

ODD: Yeah. Our 2020 demo is our first release. Actually we’ve been playing this game for a long time. Frank also plays with Rake-Off and Siege Stompers and used to play with Rise From The Agony, Mascons, Iron Shield and Disforia, Noise plays bass in Siege Stompers, sings in Cosa Nostra and used to play or sing in P2?P38!, Gandhi Kamikaze, Dormiveglia, Pilvia plays guitar with Hyle and Pulce used to play drums or sing with Death Before Work, Nervi, Giuda, Garlic and You Suck!.

Where does the inspiration for these themes come from? I am very interested in the lyrical aspect of your work.

Noise (vocals): I wrote all the lyrics so far with some help for matching words and sounds. Inspiration came out especially thinking about the nowadays situation in the so-called scene we feel related to (mainly the hc-scene) and even something personal I wrote down some time ago even before Odd existed. Plus,  I don’t see lyrics as a singer-realm: everybody's free to contribute it in the same way we contribute with some suggestions in the riff and drum parts.

On a musical level, there's a lot of Thrash in your sound (do you agree?). How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you? What are the influences combined?

ODD: Our sound is surely thrashy but there’s much more. We love crossover in the broadest sense of the word. That means that we love when hardcore punk is merged with anything else. It could be funky, heavy metal, thrash, rap, whatever. Especially in the rhythmic aspect, there’s a lot of 90’s hardcore too. Once Frank (guitars) described our music as “Living Colour playing a Sepultura song (obviusly the poorest version of both)”.

Our tastes in music are really diversified, probably all the different influences come out in some way.

What is the Italian Hardcore Punk scene like today? And Bologna, how is the scene in your city?

ODD: Unfortunately Italian and Bologna’s scenes suffer from lack of generational turnover. For sure there are many great bands (we’re not going to mention them because they’re too many) but most of them are composed of over 27 years members. We’re always excited when we see youngsters in a band. They could be immature and inexperienced but they’re full of enthusiasm, and they are responsible for keeping this game alive and we have to support them with all our strength.

The moment we are going through is undoubtedly one of the darkest and most confused of recent years, and Italy has already suffered immensely. How has your experience been since it all started? Asking if it affected you in any way I suppose is unnecessary and almost insulting…

ODD: Italy had already suffered some months ago and when everything seemed to be over, the pandemic started to strike harder than before. We have nowadays (end of november) an average number of 35.000 daily new cases. The hospitals are collapsing and many of them cannot manage the ordinary cases.
We’ve surely been affected by this situation but we have also been lucky. None of us has lost his/her job so far and we hope we’re not going to. The situation is dramatic in social, economic, health terms. 

How has the Italian Government managed things? And keep in mind that I am out, and access to real information isn't always the best.

ODD: At first we have to figure out what led us to this catastrophe. In the past twenty years, unscrupulous liberal politics caused a severe impoverishment of resources in the health system. A lot of public money has been conveyed towards private health at the expense of the public sector. Many hospitals have been closed and the ones that remained open lost a big part of their potential. As a result, when the pandemic arrived, it kicked the public health system when it was down itself. 

The current government tried to do its best to manage the pandemic during the first lockdown phase, but did nothing at all to improve the public health system and school infrastructures: now everybody can see how important they are. In general many governments are, in a way or another, forced to do or do not to do certain things because of the enemy of all of us: capitalism.

The current government is doing what every liberal government would do: it’s trying to save big companies from failure, it abandoned artisans and small businesses and did not strengthen the public health system at all. In short, it’s trying to buy time and resist until everything is over. In the meantime, people die out of the hospitals, especially in small cities and many precarious workers have lost their job.

As a band, how did this pandemic affect the dynamics of the band and, more importantly, plans for the future (immediate or not)?

ODD: In the first two months of lockdown (march-may) we could not rehearse regularly. The situation turned a bit softer in the summer and we had the chance to play two shows and record the demo. Currently we are stuck again and cannot practice because Pulce lives in another city and in many Italian regions you cannot move from one city to another at the moment.

Before this lockdown started, we were writing new songs. We hope we can release a new record by the end of next year and play as many shows as possible as soon as this pandemic shit is over.

What meaning does Punk Hardcore have today? Is it still stronger than just music?

Frank: I think that even though hardcore has nowadays lost its expressive potential, it’s still a huge way to express yourself the way you want to. Therefore it’s not just music, it’s self liberation and personal outburst. I could not imagine how my life would be without this shit.

Noise: Punk Hardcore is still stronger than just music. In an extreme synthesis it is about taking care of each other but in a different way than “peace and love”: if someone deserves a kick in the ass, he/she/it deserves it. We have to clean our scene free from fascists, racists, rapists, nationalists and all these kinds of idiots. We have, especially with the pandemic, to keep our heads on our shoulders and not be individualistic: collectivism has still a lot to do with Punk Hardcore. 

Pilvia: Punk Hardcore has a different meaning for everyone, today as probably was years ago. For me, for us, that means to have the strength to play music for the messages that you want to share with it, without getting commercialized without a content, but to express all the rage and social struggles that represent you most.

Does the idea still persist that Punk Hardcore is - or should it be - a vehicle of non-conformity, revolt and protest? Do you still look at it this way?

ODD: Probably hardcore punk is not the best way to share a structured revolutionary outlook since its audience is a niche, and if you want to broadcast a message to the masses you should probably prefer other channels. At the same time, hardcore can help you to express your idea of revolt, that can be a personal or collective riot. If you’re into hardcore, it means that you’re a non-conform person anyway, regardless of your lyrics.

Well, thank you very much again for the opportunity. Get in touch as soon as there are new songs, please eheheh a hug from Portugal!

ODD: Thank you so much Daniel for the opportunity to talk about us and our music. As soon as the new songs are recorded you’ll surely be updated! We hope to meet you personally one day!

Odd Official Bandcamp