MM: Well, DANTE was founded in late 2006, when Markus Berger and I decided that we wanted to make music together again (being pals since school). So that´s what we did. Over the next weeks several songs were created, then we asked our good friend Alex to sing, later on Chris joined as the drummer. We released our first album “The Inner Circle” in 2008, were signed by ProgRock Records for the next album “Saturnine” in 2010, and are now very happy that we could join the Massacre Records family with our latest release “November Red”.

01. Birds Of Passage (Caught In A Dream)

MM: There are times of change in your live, where you so much want things to change, to get out of all the things that were, that are around you. It´s about such a moment, a moment of clarity, where maybe something appears in front of you. But moments like that quickly pass away, so you take it now or leave it be.

02. The Lone And Level Sands

MM: It´s about fugacity, and the humility when faced with it. This applies to both each and every one personally, but also in a much bigger context of great works of art collapsing, of empires fading. Nothing´s forever, and “In the end we will finally stand in the lone and level sands”. That expression, by the way, comes from the poet Percy Shelley.

03. Beautifully Broken

MM: The first appearance of the “gothic girl”. The lyrics are very visual, and the mood is very melancholic, sad and morbidly beautiful so to speak, almost like a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.

04. The Day That Bled

MM: That moment right after you woke up, while you´re still lost in your dream, where everything seems surreal or “strangely” real. Or maybe you are not awake at all.

05. Shores Of Time

MM: An old man, dying alone, reflecting his life. He´s afraid, but also at peace, thinking about the one big love of his live. He´s ready, because her smile´s with him. Again, a poetic scene, full of melancholy and hope.

06. Allan

MM: A lone man, falling in love with a woman he sees every day, but she´s not taking notice. And maybe he´s just imagining all that. Almost some classical songwriter-lyrics.

07. November Red (In Praise Of Dreams)

MM: Once again, the “gothic girl”. Again, very visual, and all about the mood of the song.

Could you please tell us a bit about the artwork – who made it etc. and how important do you feel it is to have a cool artwork?

MM: The complete artwork was done by our singer Alex, and he has been responsible for all the DANTE artwork before that. We are very lucky to have a guy that talented in the band, so we don´t have to let someone else do it

To us, it actually is a very important part of the album. We always want to deliver a cool total package with every album, consisting of good music, well thought out lyrics and a cool artwork. Of course, the music is the most important part, but we are very picky to match the lyrics and the artwork too. I think this is something that becomes more and more important as the sales numbers of CDs keeps dropping: those who still buy CDs want to get that extra value a great artwork can deliver.

Three years have passed since the release of “Saturnine”, and “November Red” is finally out! What are the first reactions and your own feelings?

MM: It certainly does not really feel like such a long time to be honest. It usually took us 2 years to release an album, like about a year to write, then half a year for the whole production and for finding a label, then you have to wait quite some time until they schedule the release. We would have been able to keep that time span, but the whole sad thing with Markus´s disease and eventual death delayed that quite a bit.

Our own feelings about “November Red” are definitely very much connected to that situation, we cannot think about the album without also thinking about Markus, about what he contributed, about this big loss. He was completely involved in the writing and managed to record all his parts, then had to pull out of it. But all the time he reassured us that he wanted this album to be released no matter what. So we do feel a big grief that he is not around anymore, that he did not see the release of “November Red”, but we are also happy that we carried on and managed to release it as he wanted us to do.

Aside from that we are very proud of the album, I think this is really another step forward for us, I feel like it is a real strong album from start to finish, very cohesive. And fortunately, people all over the world think so too, which of course is very nice!

Is there any track that means something special for you on the album?

MM: I wouldn´t say that a specific song has a special meaning to us, but obviously the whole album, as I just said, has become very special to us, as our time with Markus came to an end just before it was released.

From a musical point of view, I am a big fan of the title track “November Red”, it just takes you through so many moods and is very “visual”. And it is so much fun to play live!

Who and what has inspired you musically on this album?

MM: I don´t feel like we had a specific inspiration musically. I think we never really had. Of course, we all listen to so many bands, and there are many things each one of us is inspired by, but it´s not a conscious thing when we write songs. Sure, a part here and there comes up and we later think like “oh, that´s a Tool-riff”, or “this could be Uriah Heep” or something like that. But it´s not like we say “ok, we need a Meshuggah riff now”.

But very soon after starting the writing we had the idea that we would like to really connect the songs to each other, that we wanted to be very concerned about the unity of the album. We thought about an album that would almost be like a gallery, where every song is a part of a bigger theme. We even had some thoughts to make it a real concept album, but it just did not develop that way. But you can still feel that approach of writing a very cohesive album when you listen to “November red” I think.

What’s the biggest difference between your previous two albums and this release?

MM: Well, I think the main difference lies in the approach just described, and though I really feel like we always wrote good “albums” that really work well as such and are not just collections of songs thrown together, we took that even further this time and we made a conscious decision to do so. With the first two albums we wrote the songs and then tried to create the best “album” with the songs available. And that was of course perfectly ok, but we wanted to change that this time. That basically equaled that we would probably not have that one huge epic we used to have (and I REALLY like them!), as they are the logical center of the album. “November Red” to me does not have this one track standing out so much above all the others. I think this is the biggest difference.

What’s next on your list, any tours planned outside of Germany again, maybe say hello to little Denmark?

MM: We have a few more shows to play in March, then we´ll start auditioning bass players to close the gap Markus´death has left in the lineup. So hopefully we will be a complete band on stage again pretty soon. We then try to support the album as much as possible playing live, we are right in the middle of planning that, and there will be quite few more dates. Whether this will see us play Denmark , I don´t know yet, as much as we´d love to go there it´s all a question of whether this can be realized, if this is financially possible, I mean we are not exactly making millions with Prog!

Thank you very much for answering my questions. Do you have any last rants for our readers?

MM: We just want to thank each and everyone who has showed their support by going to our concerts and buying our albums. It´s still tough enough to do what we do, but without you, it would be completely impossible! Thanks so much! We really hope that you have as much fun listening to “November Red” as we had writing it!