Inventive Genius: Gabriel Franzese and Dead Marble
A hidden gem, Gabriel Franzese’s Dead Marble is a complex and ethereal mix of progressive metal brilliance. Gabriel is an artistically dynamic music artist, and has composed every instrument on the album himself. His solos aren’t what you’re used to; they showcase compelling emotion and complexity beyond what we typically see in modern music.
The rhythm changes are so smooth they seem to surpass more commonplace conversions. A great example of this is Memento, his key composition on the album, that builds with aggressive tension to seemingly drift into a weightless mind trip. It’s an excellent embodiment of melodic progressive metal.
I was fortunate to speak with Gabriel on record:
https://youtu.be/iUjb1ouetIE
Transcript:
(CG) I want to start by talking about Memento. Memento was very quickly composed; you mentioned you had it composed within 20 minutes of picking up your guitar. It’s really tight. I love it. The fact that it’s one of your favorites reminded me of my own experience with songwriting—it seems the songs we feel the strongest about move very fast. They’re conceptualized and done in record time. How often does that seem to happen for you? Where you get that emotionally involved in what you’re writing; kind of “taken hostage” by it, and the song seems to just drop out of thin air?
(Gabriel) For this album, it happened twice; once with Memento and one was Flowers—they were songs that basically wrote themselves. I didn’t really need to work on them a lot. The material was there; it was very fluid. I was like, “Ok, I’ve got this cool verse for Memento; what should come after it? Oh… maybe something more rhythmic, heavier, to build tension for the chorus. And it just came out. Oh cool, and now, the chorus.. Same thing. It just came out. It would be cool now to come back to the main verse; similarly, but not the same…” The song basically wrote itself, both instrument wise and lyric wise, because Memento was inspired by Christopher Nolan’s movie, Memento, which is one of my all time favorite movies. Once I had the idea of writing the lyrics based on that (because there’s one sentence in that movie, “Just because I don’t remember it doesn’t mean my actions are meaningless”) …that was a great source of inspiration for me. I just wrote the lyrics as if I was in Lenny’s (main character's) point of view. In one sitting, everything was there. It was just fine tweaking here and there to make it the best sounding (song) possible, but the source material was there.
And Flowers as well—the same thing. It was birthed by just watching and watching multiple videos of Tim Henson, Ichika Nito, and John Mayer, because I wanted kind of a lighter type of thing for that song. If the source material is good, it’s just easy to compose something inspired by it.
(CG) Now this next question might feel a little nerve wrecking, but I think it is an interesting one, and something a lot of upcoming artists do think about and wanna hear somebody else’s take on. As an artist trying to promote your work, there comes a point where we all have to decide on and build a brand image. And when you’re building a brand image and your getting responses to the way you look (and that’s part of it), it can get real personal real quick. People expect certain looks from certain creative people. It’s not fair to be told what people are gonna expect you to look like as a musician, but it comes with the territory.
People do generally make the decision to check out a musician based on what they look like. Now, in comparison to most guys playing heavy music like you are, your image is a little more conservative. Do you feel like that has, in any way, held your music back from being listened to or pushed out there and spread around the market?
(Gabriel) To be honest, that’s something I’ve heard multiple times in my life. Like, “Oh, what type of music do you like?” “Well, I like metal, like Avenged Sevenfold, Metallica, Dream Theater…”
“Oh, but you don’t look metal”, and it’s like, "I know, but what can I do?"
There was one point in my life, about 5 or 6 years ago, that I tried growing out my hair, to have a little more rock/metal style to myself, but it didn’t work out. I like my short hair. I like to present myself in that more conservative way. And do I think it might discourage people from checking out the music? I don’t see it that way. I kinda see it the opposite; because people will listen to me and say, “Wow, that sounded nothing like I expected it to.” And so, it might turn them onto it, or it might put them off to it—but it means that they checked it out.
So you never know what people are gonna like or what they’re not gonna like, and that’s something I’ve seen the people in the metal community a lot. Like, if he doesn’t look a certain way, if he’s not a certain percentage of a “metal looking person”, then I might not check it out.
But for me, there’s no discrimination whatsoever. You may look like whatever you want, and you can make good music.
(CG) You’re a really deep thinker. I’ve listened to your album and I’ve paid a lot of attention to your lyrics. Your songs are really detailed and dynamic. How long did it take you to put together Dead Marble—your album? The concepts, the music itself—it’s all such a really nice, complete package. Extremely well done.
(Gabriel) Thank you. Well, from start to finish—this was a 2020 New Year’s resolution—I wanted to write my album that year. I didn’t know it was gonna be under the name of Dead Marble yet. That name came in mid 2022. 2020 was the writing year. There was one bright side of Covid for me, was that I had time to focus on the music because everything was stopped. It was like, “Ok, let me write my album. This is a great excuse.” So 2021 was the recording and fine tweaking of songs. I finished the demos at the end of 2020, sent them out to people at the start of 2021, asked for feedback, fine tweaked the songs, found a producer, found a studio to record drums in, recorded drums, recorded guitar, bass—everything. At the end of 2021, I recorded vocals, and a friend of mine recorded the other half of the vocals. I have a guest singer, Cameron Lafond, on songs I had a little bit of an issue with the range of melodies I wanted.
2022 came, and it was the year that mastering took place, mixing, the whole visual identity, the name Dead Marble, the album cover; all of the business aspects of the music. All the post production. And so 2023 came, and I wanted to release it this year, because it’s been basically three years of my life, going to one album. I was like, “Ok, I’ve held onto this for long enough—my girlfriend has listened to it multiple times already, my family’s listened to it multiple times already… now it’s finally time to reveal it."
(CG) You’re highly skilled on multiple instruments. Most people who play more than one instrument will play a little bit on this one, but they’ll be focused on this one over here, and always play this one better… but you seem to be mind-blowingly good on every instrument that you pick up. Did you compose everything on these songs by yourself initially and then bring people in to record with, or did you start by collaborations with anybody?
(Gabriel) Oh no—All of the songs, all the material on Dead Marble was 100% written and composed by myself, and all the instruments. Like I mentioned before, the vocals—I did wanna sing on all of the songs, but I am not a good singer. There’s this one interview Metallica did like, 20 years ago, where Kirk Hammet (guitarist) says, “Lead guitar and attempted vocals”, and it stuck with me. And so I play drums, I play guitar, I play bass, I play keyboards, but I play “attempted vocals”. And so because of this, I asked someone else, Cameron Lafond, a friend of mine who I’ve worked in the past with (and his voice is incredible).
He’s crazy—he listened to the songs once or twice before coming into the studio, stepped into the studio—and destroyed everything. Every track—out of the park. But that was the only other contribution to the album apart from myself. Instrumentally, everything was written and recorded by myself. There were also other people involved in background vocals that we did in the studio, but in terms of the main personnel—drums, guitar, bass, keyboards—that’s me. Some vocals, me. The other lead vocals are Cameron.
(CG) That’s amazing. I want to thank you so much for this interview—I love talking music and art, and this was a lot of fun. I wish you well. I encourage everybody out there to listen to Dead Marble; it’s a great album by Gabriel Franzese.
(Gabriel) Thank you so much, Christine, and to whoever is listening.
Listen to Dead Marble on Spotify Here
Website: Dead Marble
