BIO 
Giada Celeste Chelli (lead vocals, piano & orchestration), Ferruccio Baroni (bass), Michel Agostini (drums & vocals)
Violet Blend are an Italian alternative metal band, featuring extraordinary vocals, rich sonic power, and unbridled energy. Founded in 2014 in Florence, Italy, the band is made up by Giada Celeste Chelli (vocals and piano), Michel Agostini (drums), and Ferruccio Baroni (bass). Known for culture and fine art, many believe this city was the birthplace of The Renaissance, and while famously populated, its musical community is ironically lean and tight-knit. Therefore, it is not surprising that these four talented musicians knew each other long before the release of their debut album White Mask, which received high praise from audiences and critics, both locally and abroad.
In terms of touring, Violet Blend has supported tours of renowned bands such as Radiohead, Garbage, Palaye Royale, Chris Slade (AC/DC), Vinnie Moore (Alice Cooper), Starcrawler, Eva Poles (Prozac+) Finley, Rezophonic (Mario Riso, Cristina Scabbia), and the British band Antimatter. Moreover, the band has won several awards, including Band Revelation of 2019 from the F.I.P.I. – International Intellectual Property Federation, #togetherforthemusic 2020 of Elio e le Storie Tese, Trio Medusa, Cesvi and Radio Deejay, and the Et Music Prize at Sanremo Rock 2019.
This kind of meteoric rise to celebrity is often launched by some sort of scholastic acclaim, and it is interesting to note that band members of Violet Blend earned degrees, or have been named members of the faculty, at some of the most prestigious institutions in Italy. As for the music more specifically, Violet Blend do not simply write and perform “catchy songs,” but rather, they make haunting and glorious musical portraits that personify beauty, discontent, passion, and rage.
The White Mask (2018) record exposed the fallacy of using social media to represent “the self,” and the new album, Demons , continues the journey by moving the focus to the more personal, internal mechanism we use to make our own tragic masks. We do this to represent ourselves favorably to others, and our fragile, raw truths remain fatally hidden. Still, the glory is the crucial moment we decide to unveil. Not for others. For us. For the sake of the soul.
There are thirteen tracks on Demons (2022 – Eclipse Records), all cornerstones for the theme of ambitious yet contradictory facades, and each song is represented in the cover-art as masks of demons from every culture in the world, stemming from Greek mythology, Chinese tradition, and Dante’s literature, to the Aztec Empire, Celtic mythography, and African rituals, etc.
Track 1 titled “Rock DJ,” is the album’s first single, and it is associated with God Bes – Ancient Egypt: protector of music and entertainment, the patron saint of dancers. The song projects this with the awesome power of the vocal and the driving backbeat that would have massive appeal to rockers, glam rockers, metalheads, and sludge- lovers alike. The guitar is lavish and at times ornate, featuring satisfying chord changes and a lead portion composed of blistering sweeps and big bends and wails.
Track 3 titled “Among These Fools,” is the second single, and it is associated with Oni – Japan: bringers of disaster and spreaders of disease who are destined to punish the damned in hell. Much of Violet Blend’s appeal is expressed through contradiction: dissonance alongside sonic eloquence, hard guitar scratch juxtaposed with carefully sculpted riffs overtop. This song embraces such powerful and poetic irony with a harsh theme delivered through a lovely ethereal vocal that reminds us of the exquisite pain and beauty in the world.
Track 5 titled “Need,” is the third single, and it is associated with Medusa – Ancient Greece: the Gorgon with snakes instead of hair and the power to petrify anyone who looks at her. This tune is a mystical masterpiece featuring a stripped-down guitar’s acoustic effect transitioning to a metal feel, percussion going from halves to full tempo, and a climax based on clever dynamics rather than volume.
Track 8 titled, “La Donna Mobile,” is the fourth single, and it is associated with Kālī – India: Goddess of active and disruptive feminine energy, representing the female force in all its extreme power. This song features a strong, exotic rhythm section and it is sung in Italian, making the experience for the listener romantic and heart-felt. If this tune does not give you chills and also make you want to stand on your chair and scream, nothing will.
The song is the soundtrack of “La Donna Mobile (Fickle Woman) – Campaign against gender discrimination and violence”, a non-profit project and social campaign in support to AIDOS – Italian Association of Women for Development and with the collaboration and sponsorship of the Municipality of Florence (Italy) and the Department for Equal Opportunities. The intent is to carry out a project to promote equality, empowerment, education, and information, focused on the role of women in the workplace, through a social campaign that leads the community to reflect through art, in the widest of its meanings.
The new single “Voices In My Head“, released on November 2, 2022 via Eclipse Records, is an inner conversation that screams instead of whispering. The track speaks of insecurity, fear and doubt of not being good enough. It is a furious urgency, a violent need to get rid of all those mental chains and thoughts that prevent you from living freely. The music video represents the lonely and delirious life of a woman admitted to a mental health center. The fluctuating time, the fears, the uncertainties, the delirium of a life lived in chains. Giada’s blindfold, which we can see on the cover of the single and in the video, represents the blindness we are induced to when we allow all negative thoughts and judgments to overwhelm us, preventing us from see reality.
Violet Blend are an awe-inspiring female fronted band that make us measure our internal landscape differently.
Demons is an exciting record with something for everyone, from the superlative vocal to the rhythm-chops that seem to echo the true pulse of the world. Are you ready to join them in this? Are you fired up now? Are you ready to rock?
Reviews
- (8.5/10) “Above all, Giada Celeste Chelli can convince with her singing” – Crossfile Metal Webzine
- (8.4/10) “outstanding vocals, powerful sound and irrepressible energy” – Keep On Rocking
- (8.3/10) “Vocalist Giada Celeste Chelli brings a lot of freshness to the Rock and Metal scene” – Metalheads Forever
- (4/5) “Demons is a record that sticks with you… Violet Blend has hit it out of the park” – Pretty Vacant One
- (8/10) “Giada Celeste Chelli can convince with her singing, this band brings a lot of fresh air to the rock & metal scene” – Rock Castle Franken
- (6.5/10) “interesting compositions and catchy songs” – Greek Rebels
- (3/5) “plenty of radio-ready hard rock singles” – Heavy Music HQ
- “a must-listen for all, and a valued manifestation of Italian art!” – Metal IT
- “a great band whose music can stand the test of time” – Italia Di Metallo
- “an exciting record with something for everyone” – Allternative IT