THE DEAD FLOWERS GRAVES: Beyond the Veil: The Sound of Fear, Death, and Rebirth

The Dead Flowers Graves isn’t just a band—it’s a ritual, an exploration of death, fear, and the unspoken forces that shape our reality. In this interview, they dive deep into the transcendental power of sound, the forgotten wisdom buried in small country cemeteries, and the balance between tradition and breaking the mold. They challenge perceptions of death, explore the dark undercurrents of Italian culture, and reveal how their music seeks to liberate pain rather than dwell in it. This is more than doom metal—it’s a sonic and philosophical journey.

-Hi, first off thanks for answering our questions. How’s everything going in the lair of The Dead Flowers Graves?

First of all, Thank you for the opportunity you are giving us. We can tell you that we are in the composition phase for an album, after three EPs now it’s time to take a more decisive step. We want to make a small but significant change, we are cultivating the details, the nuances. We are testing ourselves with something we have never done before, we are not talking about innovation, but about going outside the famous comfort zone, experiencing those things that until years ago we looked at from afar with distrust, but now must be experienced with wisdom and courage.

-In «Elemento,» your music intertwines heavy doom with occult prog, creating a ritualistic auditory experience. How do you perceive the role of music in facilitating a spiritual or transcendental journey for both the band and the listener?

Sound is part of being human. Everything is sound. Even silence. Sounds express moods, capture things in the ether and make you see them. When you connect to the vibration of sound, you are connected to the whole. Sound heals, cleans, clarifies, is therapeutic, is a form of expression. The sound resonates. Everyone identifies with a musical genre for a reason and it has to do with different places on the planet, because every part of the world has a different sound.

The task of those who create music is to delve into the depths of themselves to bring out authenticity, without which you cannot now communicate and transmit anything. If you’re not authentic, the audience senses it. Sound is tuning with your soul.

I’ll explain with some Italian words:

ACCORDARSI (tune or accord in English as you prefer)

contains the word COR

which poetically in Italian means HEART.

The Will is located in the heart, and when you cultivate it, your essence emerges.

We don’t have the presumption of bringing people to their own awareness, but every musician should act with this intent and take responsibility for what he/she writes or plays, how he/she does it.

-Your band name reflects a deep respect for the forgotten and the romantic image of small country cemeteries. How do you believe this perspective influences the thematic and emotional depth of your music?

When you interface with death you either run away or you become profound. We deal with death every day and we still understand very little. They have painted death with terrifying and depressing images with paintings, books, impositions, prayers for centuries. With the modern era everything has been made bigger with mass media with special effects. A small country cemetery takes you back to the earth and humility, to listening to yourself, far from the chaos created specifically by urban centers. In that cemetery there is the delicacy of every single pebble that you step on, every blade of grass, every dry flower. There is still the care of invisible nature that makes it possible that that place is still there, within your reach. But do you see that something is missing? Do you see that interaction with human beings is missing? Forgotten?

And this is what is wonderful, that once again the sound of silence and distance can reconnect you to something that we don’t understand but that wants to make itself understandable. the connection with death is missing. there is a subtle and delicate care there. That’s death. Death doesn’t tear your soul away if you see it for what it is. You are the one who tears your soul apart every day of your life. Death is a greatness that cradles you in its arms and gives you the peace that you denied yourself in your earthly life. Death is the continuation of the journey we make and the second gift we receive: the first is the honor of that door that is opened to us in this world called Life.

We learned much more in those little country cemeteries than in all the books we can read in life.

-Italian art has a rich tradition of exploring dark and macabre themes, from cinema to music. How do you draw inspiration from this cultural heritage, and in what ways do you aim to contribute to this tradition through your work?

Our tradition is a set of forms of expression where you can feel a flavor that unites: The terror that generates loneliness, madness, the different, distrust, envy. it’s all written in our mind, they are the demons that we created. There are evil entities that have been attacking the forces of light for infinite times, but what we read are stories of… homegrown energies. As we said in a previous answer, every place has a sound, or a set of different sounds. Italy has its own sound and its need to play it. They are stories that live in houses on the lagoons, villas in plains and hills, small churches and country cemeteries, superstitions and black magic, killings, old wandering spirits, everything that is buried underground, the need to somehow connect to the darkness to savor a sort of obsessive and hypnotic power.  

We give a voice to what is down there and wants to be heard and liberated. the atmosphere is undoubtedly suggestive and fascinating, but it is that thread of mystery combined with respect for what has been experienced with suffering. Pain must be freed, no longer cultivated, it must be understood, made lighter, it moves towards evolution, it does not remain closed in old patterns. In Behind The Void we play the mourning and pain of a feminine of the nature trampled by the human being, but that pain needed to be seen, recognized, liberated. In As The Flame Burns we talk about recognizing the orders of nature and re-establishing respect. The mysterious sound creates a magic, which we use to envelop the listener and lead him to reflect, to plant a seed.

-Lovecraft’s influence is deeply embedded in your music, particularly in its dark, cosmic themes. How does his philosophy of the unknown and the unfathomable shape the lyrical and musical direction of «Elemento»? What aspects of his work resonate most with you and your band?

Lovecraft embodies for us the unseen, the unrecognized, all the efforts, but the continuous drive that leads you to breathe passion into the music we create. All of Lovecraft’s monsters play out our deepest, most mental fears. We live them so obsessively that sometimes they take absurd forms. We are now adults and we are quite aware of our emotions, but sometimes they come knocking in the form of that child who we were, scared and lost. The first EP Three Dried Flowers in Her Hand was much more influenced, and you can hear it in a song like Caprimulgus, taken from that terrifying story «The Dunwich Horror»

We admire Lovecraft a lot because he had the same mental ruminations as us, sensitive and perhaps even a little stubborn.
despite his particular nature, upon his death, the condolences of his fellow writers around the world were very strong, his commemoration moved us very much, as if we were there living through that historical period. his mind was fascinating for its ability to translate all this into stories and imaginations that have remained imprinted in the memory even today.

-In a previous interview, you mentioned the importance of breaking the mold and creating something different. How do you balance the desire for innovation with staying true to the core elements of doom metal that define your sound?

Great question. and so, thank you for reading our interviews.

we have a strange measuring stick. if what we experience scares us or sounds «strange» to us but turns us on… then we are on the right path. or at least we believe. I repeat, we don’t have the presumption of creating anything innovative, but the patterns are starting to feel tight. the will makes the difference. in all of this there are small internal crises of not being up to the future, but once you realize that you are not infallible and that everything you do is driven by a personal form of courage, everything takes on a design that must be painted one piece at a time.
our basis is to create atmosphere and magic, rituals and words. our time is to slow down.

-Your music often delves into themes of death and the supernatural. How do you approach the portrayal of these subjects to ensure they resonate authentically with listeners, and what personal experiences or beliefs influence this portrayal?

We try to take fear by the hand and walk through it together. We talk about some things because we have had some experiences, and so we have accepted the fact that there is something beyond matter. It’s easy looking for them in films, in books, in music, for strong emotions, for an impulse that concerns us in certain aspects. But when is the supernatural coming to you?

We are all good at being fascinated and attracted by certain things, but when does the opposite happen? are you really prepared? Could you accept it?  in our previous Spectrum (in the limited boxset version) we included a small collection of first-person experiences because we felt the need to share in the most basic and human way possible. This was the best way to resonate with listeners.

Feeling like you are experiencing a funeral with great simplicity and lightness of heart, while everyone around you is crying and in pain, can be disarming. but you feel that you don’t want to get involved in their pain, you can bring something high in your silence and in your peace. it’s absurd, if you think that there are people paid to cry at funerals. it’s absurd, if you know you live in a world where death is made into a show that glues millions of spectators to the mass media. then, you turn it off, you turn away and continue as if it had never happened.
Death is fed up with all this, deeply angry, Death doesn’t want glossy covers on the front page. Have you ever tried to tell someone that death is an energy that takes care of you? without triggering an earthquake? you can do it if you take fear by the hand and walk through it together. you will discover that it is fear itself that gives you courage.

-Given the band’s diverse musical backgrounds, how do you navigate the integration of various influences to create a cohesive sound that remains true to your artistic vision?

We want to create a balance. as you have surely read, we come from different experiences ranging from post-punk to deathmetal to hardcore. at the beginning it was difficult to compose, because sometimes it came out too dark, sometimes too black metal, a good challenge. it took time to enter the atmosphere we needed and empathize with it, convince ourselves. we forced ourselves to calm down and wait. it took months, maybe a couple of years. now we can feel songs really ours.

-And before we wrap this interview up, what are your near-future plans?

as we said before, an album for sure, with a lot of curiosities throughout. we have a line, not too defined, because the future changes rapidly here. we prefer to take small steps at a time, to stay focused. we know that once it’s over, everything will have made sense, but we’ll know that time. It’s the beauty of living life without setting expectations. We hope for a year of concerts, we want to promote Elemento.

-That’s all from our side. Thanks again for answering these questions. If you’d like to add any final words, it’s your turn.

Thank you for giving us a space. Thank you so much for your work. Interviews like yours give us the opportunity to show our musical side but also our human side, to be able to talk about ourselves and often talk about things that are not obvious.

Thanks to everyone who has read this far.