Dark Quarterer

The original group was formed in 1974 in Piombino and was called "Omega erre". Eight years of playing cover followed with no concerts or performances, but a continuous effort to capture the sounds and colours of the hard and progressive rock of those years. It was an absolute imperative for the band to reproduce the songs faithfully - they played dozens of covers of Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Krokus, Grand Funk Railroad, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Gentle Giant, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Van Der Graaf Generator, Deep Purple, Ten Years After, Cream, Manowar, Michael Shenker, Colosseum… After hearing the band in rehearsal, Duccio Marchi, a great friend and keen fan of avant garde Rock, suggested they compose something completely new. The group thought about its degree of musical development and its capacity to create something both inspired by all the music already heard but that would be really different from everything. It seemed impossible to realise anything truly original. If it hadn't been for the continual insistence of Duccio Marchi perhaps Dark Quarterer would never have existed! Their first composition was too light-weight harmonically and too commercial, boring even on first hearing……….Fulberto Serena experimented with classical sonorities (Bach), arpeggios that were also veritable riffs, almost exclusively in the minor aiming to achieve the darkest colour possible. On top of this, the name "Omega erre" as it stood suggested nothing good. The name Dark Quarterer was Duccio's inspiration - he explained that "quarterer" was old English for the butcher of slaughtered animals. The "Logo" that identifies Dark Quarterer was the result of a more general idea of the group and has appeared since the first disc: a virtual trade mark! The "new-born" Dark Quarterer started to produce their first musical sketches: Fulberto Serena brought ideas, themes, melodies and the group slowly transformed it all into definitive versions of the songs. Duccio also contributed to the final result demolishing all the musical choices that did not seem good to his ear like the worst critic. So it took a lot of instinct but also many corrections and radical changes in order to achieve a final result that could not be improved upon. Only when everyone firmly believed in it was the result considered definitive. The introverted and moody personality of Fulberto contributed to disturbing pieces like the self-titled Dark Quarterer, The Entity, Gates of Hell, in which the protagonist actually wanted to live and die in the name of evil to dethrone Lucifer in the underworld! The themes of Gianni Nepi's lyrics were anyway always inspired by Fulberto Serena. Paolo Ninci's role at the time was exclusively as percussionist. The arrangements were however the result of group collaboration. The first reviews spoke of a masterpiece and of the creation of a new musical style "Epic progressive" (Cubito Claudio - Rockerilla 1987) About a year later the group was contacted by Giorgio Mangora who proposed the production of a second album. The songs had already been created in part and the guarantee of production gave the group the necessary stimulus to complete the work.