Interviews About Albums: RISE ABOVE DEAD - Voidmass (2026)
1. What can you say about Voidmass?
Voidmass is a milestone for us. In 2022, the band went through some lineup changes, and a few of the songs on this record were already taking shape while we were still an instrumental band. At first, the idea was to keep going down the path of Urlo and Heavy Gravity. We asked ourselves for a long time whether to bring a voice back. Then we reconnected with our original singer, Andrea Rondanini, and the feeling was right from the start. The songs fit him perfectly. We spent a lot of time working out exactly where the vocals should go, and we reshaped some of the arrangements to give the voice the right space to breathe.
Our songs don’t follow a verse-chorus structure. It takes a strong singer to handle that: someone with the nerve to stay silent for minutes in the middle of a song and wait for the right moment to come in, and the presence to stand in the middle of the crowd, which is no small thing. It’s an unstable balance, and that’s exactly what makes it work.
So is Voidmass closing a circle or starting something new? Both. We’ve been around since 2010, and we’ve changed a lot over the years, always following our own path. In the end, the most personal step we could take was going back to where we started, but as the band we are today.
2. What is the meaning of the album name?
Voidmass is how we translate these times into music. Geopolitical tensions and technologies like AI that are changing everything faster than we can understand keep raising the same question: will humanity be able to adapt? So imagine a mass thrown into the void. What happens to it? Where does it go, and what does it set in motion? It could be humanity itself, a collective body drifting through emptiness without a clear direction. We’re all being thrown into the void, toward destinations we don’t know.
The visual side works the same way. Our former guitarist Stefano Bigoni, who also did the artwork for Stellar Filth and Heavy Gravity, helped us with the cover and visuals. We wanted to stay connected to those earlier records, so we kept the sci-fi imagery: alien landscapes, mountains, and a rippling sea with the event horizon looming over it. It’s the point of no return, the edge of the unknown.
3. Who is the composer of Voidmass?
None of us, really. Voidmass was born in the rehearsal room, which for us is a sacred place. Everything starts from jamming, and then we refine it slowly, almost by distillation, until it becomes a real song. Some tracks took a long time to grow. Annihilation/Rebirth, for example, started as two very different pieces. Over time, they gained meaning and melted into one.
Then, in April 2026, Stefano Santi of Orkid Studio gave us some free slots to record, and we decided to take the risk. We wrote a couple of songs on the fly and finished them in the studio. One of them is Through Zenith, the track that closes the album. It came from our wish to use retro synth sounds that we don’t usually bring on stage, but that are part of who we are, because we’re big fans of drone music. Marcello Tuveri, aka Emtu, understood perfectly what we were trying to say: a kind of cosmic message in a bottle. With pads and analog synths he built a sonic journey that closes the record and leaves the listener lost somewhere in the cosmos.
4. If you had to pick one song, which one would you pick?
Drowning Slowly. That’s why we chose it as the first single: it has everything. Tight riffing, an opening for the vocals, and a long post-metal coda to close it. It’s a snapshot of how Rise Above Dead interpret this genre in 2026.
5. Is there a special message in Voidmass?
Voidmass definitely comes from a nihilistic place, a kind of dark introspection that runs through the whole concept of the album. The lyrics are raw and personal, but they leave space for the listener to find their own meaning. The sci-fi visuals work on two levels. They can be an escape, distant shores where you might land after all the suffering. Or they can be a mirror of the alienating, empty reality we all live in every day. We leave it to the listener to decide which one it is.
6. Are there some lyrics that you’d love to share?
“We screamed into the void, but it never knew our names.”
It’s from Annihilation/Rebirth, and it sums up the whole album. Voidmass is about a humanity that keeps crying out for answers, for meaning, for someone to listen, and gets back only silence. There’s no god to save us and no sky that intervenes. Just us, and the void.
But the record doesn’t end in pure despair. In Voices Fade Away, there’s a line that pushes the other way:
“If there’s a spark beneath the noise, if there’s a truth I’ve never known, I’ll chase it through the endless dark until it feels like home.”
That’s the tension running through all of Voidmass: falling into the dark, and still trying to find yourself in it.
7. Which inspirations have been important for this album? Someone you’d love to thank?
Musically, we think of bands like Amenra, Russian Circles, Om and Rosetta, among others. But also Italian bands we grew up with, like Lento and Ufomammut. And the scene itself is a source of inspiration: for our release show we’ll share the stage with Magnitudo and Baratro, two bands that prove the Italian scene is alive and thrives on people taking part.
We want to thank Argonauta Records for believing in this project; Stefano Santi at Orkid Studio; and Stefano Bigoni for the artwork. A special thanks goes to two close friends: Marcello Tuveri, aka Emtu, a multi-instrumentalist who gave Through Zenith its cosmic soul, and Danilo “Dano” Battocchio, the mastermind behind Last Minute to Jaffna and a true connoisseur of this genre, who mastered the record at Deepest Sound Studio.
Over these years, there were times when the band struggled, and times when, on a human level, music became something to hold on to just to keep going. We hope Voidmass reaches the people who love this genre. In Italy, it’s a small audience, but a really passionate one.
8. Something to add?
Voidmass is our fifth chapter, so we want our live show to tell the whole story. The setlist includes songs from Heavy Gravity and from Urlo, our previous album, and we even brought back Hide and Weep, which takes us back to our early crust and post-hardcore days. Of course, most of the space goes to the Voidmass songs, which we’re really proud of. Live is where we plan to give our best.
Voidmass is out November 27 on CD and digital via Argonauta Records. Come to our release show on December 4 at Arci Blob, with Magnitudo and Baratro. We’re playing on our home turf near Milan, so it’s going to be a special night. See you there.
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