Hi and first of all thank to all of you @ MetalReviews for your kind support, for talking about Nexus Opera with your very nice review and for this interview. Hope we can generate interest in your readers. So, Nexus Opera is based in Rome, Italy and started as a band in late 2002 when two guitar players (Marco and Alessandro), friends since they were kids, decided to play together. Marco was, and still is, a great fan of Nightwish and also liked Stratovarius and other bands related to this sound. About Alessandro we can say that he has been growing playing guitar and listening to guitar hero like Malmsteen since he was a small child thanks to his father (guitar player too). The guys soon met Gianfrancesco, keyboard player in the process of moving from his home town Pescara to the capital of Rome for studying. Gianfranchesco also was a fan of both this music and also the progressive metal style of Dream Theater. Then it was the turn of Andrea, a very fast drummer (now playing, among the others, for Sudden Death, a brutal death metal band from Rome) and Enrico a super Maiden fan; both were from Genzano, a small town very close to Rome. And then, last guy to join the band: Davide, vocalist and Maiden maniac too. He is from Catania, Sicily where he lived until the end of school-university age and sang with a band named Abel & Cain. Then he moved to Rome to work and finally joined Nexus Opera.

With this lineup we started to write our first songs already with lyrics based on WWII events. The music was a mixture of power and melodic classic heavy metal with a little bit of symphonic stuff. It was 2003 and we played our first shows in some local venues. We were full of passion and will to play, but everything broke down when Andrea left the band to play more extreme music with his other band. We tried to replace him but then we experienced other problems and at the end of 2004 the game was over. We had to wait until summer 2012 to meet each other together again and, almost joking, we talked about a comeback as Nexus Opera. The week after we were rehearsing our beloved old songs with a new drummer, named Alessandro (so there were two now!). We felt our passion rising up again, wrote a new song and in 2013 we made a comeback on stage with the right feelings and emotions. This was the no-turning point for us ? and led us to write new stuff. Finally, we spent almost the whole 2014 recording, mixing, mastering our songs to close that circle that was started several years before. Of course, we like to say that we are basically six normal guys, six friends, each one with his job (and today this is a real good thing!!!) but with a great passion: our music. And we are so lucky and happy to see our little dream become true…a dream named Tales from WWII.

To say the truth no. It is our first work and it is a new and unknown world for us. We already knew some of the Spider Rock bands, and had some shows with one of them. Of course, during our recording sessions we had a chance to talk with these friends for some advices and suggestions and finally we got in touch and talked to the guys @ Spider Rock. After this meeting we took some time to make our choice, but now we can say that it has been the right move. These guys know their job and they gave us the chance to spread our name and our music in places absolutely unreachable for us without their help.

Oh…well, yes in a certain way we can call it a concept. And you are right, each song tells about a different tale, or event, or people. We have a common background, a common thread to which each tale is related and, as the album title says, is The World War II. It is an idea we had since the beginning when we wrote, for example, Wolpack (dedicated to the German U- boats) and NachtHexen (dedicated to the Soviet female bomber pilots). When we came back together we chose to follow again the idea of an entire album speaking about WWII tales. We like to think that people can hear and like (hopefully :) ) the songs but also that they can read lyrics, knowing or remembering tales that deserve to be remembered. And yes…of course we know of great bands like Sabaton (one of Davide's fav bands) and Hail of Bullets that play songs based on war tales and we can be only honored of this but we hope people don’t think we want to simply copy this or that band

Almost. Actually, most of the songs speak about tales from the european ‘side’ for example the instrumental opener Ardenne and the following Return of a Hero concerning the invasion of France made by the German nazi forces, or the already quoted Wolfpack and NachtHexen. We have also Katyn dedicated to the Polish soldiers and civilians died in the namesake massacre and Laconia, a great drama involving a British ocean liner, Italian POWs, German U-boats and American B24. Other songs can be seen from each point of view, like Freedom Fighters and The End of War.

For a thousand cranes is the sad story of Sadako Sasaki, a baby girl from Hiroshima, that got sick of Leukemia ten years after the A-bomb dropping. Her story became so famous thanks to her will to fight and to live. Following a Japanese legend she began to fold paper to make cranes…and she needed 1000 cranes to heal. She never reached the number but her name will be never forgotten and the paper cranes, now, is a no nuke and peace symbol. Again, year after year, children from all over Japan and the whole World send to Hiroshima origami cranes, in memory of Sadako. If, one day, you’ll go to Hiroshima be sure not to lose a visit at the museum and to the park of peace where you can find a statue of this little girl. Finally, we can say that the legend was a little bit true...Sadako will always live with her cranes.

Thanks for asking this, because it’s a matter on which we received several different opinions. We think we can find some good answers to this one.

First, our work was basically a self-production and we couldn’t manage a great budget, as everyone can understand.

Second, for sure we can also assume that, being our very first experience in the studio, we were not so skilled and there are several things we could do better. Surely we learned dozens of things and hopefully we can keep all this good information and use it for the next time.

That being said and last but not least, we worked much time on the sound and, to be honest, we liked it. You say it feels like something retro…don’t know exactly but, in some way, you are correct again. We like this sound, a little bit warm and dark; it fits better with the lyrics and it gives a nice atmosphere. Maybe we also like it because it is similar to the sound we are used to. We are not so young eh eh eh and our roots are in the ‘80-‘90 both in Heavy Metal and Power Metal, so we can easily assume this as the main reason.

In the future who knows, if we'll have the chance, we hope we can show a more modern sound.

We made a release party just before Xmas here in Rome and in this 2015 we want to play more shows. At this moment we have scheduled only a couple of gigs here nearby but hope we can add some more for spring/summer, and maybe some little festival. We have also some ideas to make video, but it is still in the pending list.

Again we’d like to thank you for your review and for this chance to talk about ourselves. We say a big hello from Italy to all of your readers. Please, try to take a listen to our music (and read our lyrics); you can find Tales from WWII in almost all digital stores like Amazon, itunes or Google Play and others. We have limited physical copies of CD also so, if anyone can be interested should get in touch with us. Here our social spaces: https://www.facebook.com/nexusopera, https://twitter.com/NexusOpera and our web http://www.nexusopera.com/. Please support us and let our music spread. Bye and see ya somewhere in time…