In order to tell the true history of XIPE it's absolutely necessary to start from the history of another band, CAPTAIN KILL, another fundamental band of the Vicenza heavy metal scene in the early '80s.
XIPE's are actually rooted in CAPTAIN KILL and represent its evolution.
CAPTAIN KILL ( Pietro Albanese, guitar - Ego Filotto, guitar - Antonio Garello, bass - Paolo Urbani, drums - Mauro Castagna, vocals ) were formed in the summer of 1982, following the wake of all those new bands that appeared on the British music of the time and gave birth to the so called NWOBHM ( New Wave Of British Heavy Metal ). The band soon received many enthusiastic appreciations from the public after a substantial number of gigs in the area of Vicenza.
Their concerts were organized with the care, professionality and technical competence which are not easily found even in today's semi-pro bands. This particulare care and professionality was going to be found also in XIPE's concerts.
My adventure with CAPTAIN KILL began in the summer of 1983: at that time I was the lead vocalist of a Valdagno hard - rock band called " THE JACKILLS " and in the previous months I had seen a few of CAPTAIN KILL's live concerts, admiring the quality of their live performances.
On one evening of that distant April 1983 I was at my home watching a TV film when suddenly the bell rang. I opened the door and, much to my surprise, I met Ego Filotto, Pietro Albanese and Antonio Garello. I invited them in and they soon explained the reason for their unexpected but welcome visit: they were looking for a new vocalist for their band because Mauro Castagna had just decided to leave CAPTAIN KILL and devote himself to other activities. After being told by a friend about me they chose to ask me to join the band.( I later found out that the person they had spoken with was a dear friend of mine who often came to listen to our rehearsals).
Of course I soon accepted the offer with great enthusiasm, even though I was a bit sad for the old band mates I was going to leave: for a short period I worked with both bands but later the commitments with my new band forced me to leave my old mates and devote myself totally to CAPTAIN KILL .
In the meantime drummer Paolo Urbani had to leave for service in the army and his role was taken over by Franco Rossato, a well known drummer of the Valdagno music scene at that time.
With this drummer, in the summer of 1983, we prepared and recorded four songs at the famous Work Music Studio in Vicenza. This material was going to be the band's first official demo "A Message from the Captain". The recording and mixing work was completed at the end of July.
That was the first time we entered a recording studio and it was an unforgettable experience for all of us. The four new songs ( Walking off the Road, Day of the Beast, Beads of Rain and Screams in the Sky ) soon captured the public's attention with their energy and freshness. I remember that the ballad "Beads of Rain", one of the best songs of our production, was being played a lot in the private radio stations and was often used as a dedication song.
People liked the romantic originality of that song, which has always been considered as our "Stairway to Heaven", our most famous ballad, ( with humble respect for the great Led Zeppelin masterpiece that I used just as an example ).
Unfortunately, in the autumn of the same year, also Pietro Albanese had to leave for service in the army and except for a few live appearances in some rock meetings of the area, the band was forced again to stop and suspend all activities until Pietro and Paolo would be back.
In the meantime I joined another metal band, the BLACK RIDERS, with which I performed four or five concerts during 1984, with a very interesting repertoire composed with the other five members of the band ( we had a peculiar feature in that we initially had three guitarists, but later we went back to the more traditional line-up with two guitars, bass, drums and vocals ).
It's a real pity that we have no live recordings of that period as many of those songs were really very interesting.
When our guitarist and drummer came back at the end of 1984 CAPTAIN KILL started working again. So I joined the band again with Adriano Valente, guitarist with BLACK RIDERS, ( who had split soon afterwards ). In the meantime Ego Filotto had left the group to devote himself to jazz and was taken over by Adriano Valente. Only a couple of live concerts were made with the old name CAPTAIN KILL, as with the new line-up named "XIPE" ( Pietro Albanese, guitar - Adriano Valente, guitar - Antonio Garello, bass - Paolo Urbani, drums - Diego Benetti, vocals) the group was taking the music to new territories while being always faithful to the sound of the earlier band.
( Many CAPTAIN KILL compositions were in fact introduced in the new band's song list ).
The band soon began working hard and went in the studio in May 1985 for the recording of their second demo ( with the name XIPE ) called "In the Name of Xipe". The four tracks of the new demo ( Hell's Drivers - Look at my Mind -Flash and Thunders - In the Name of Xipe ) had a heavier sound than in the earlier demo, definitely an epic metal sound.
Later the four tracks of the first demo were added to this one thus forming an 8 track demo, with the same title " In the Name of Xipe".
Many copies of the demo were sold and distributed during the band's concerts which gathered quite a substantial audience. The demo represents XIPE's first great album even though no music label has ever published it.
Soon after that many concerts followed in the Verona and Vicenza areas during all 1985 and part of 1986, each with large and enthusiastic audiences. Even a small "Xipe Fan Club" was created in 1986 and it was led by our friend Mauro Maule.
Memorable concerts were those at the municipal theater of Recoaro Terme in December 1985 and at the San Bonifacio theater in 1986, both of them witnessed by CD recordings.
Unfortunalely, all XIPE's live material, at least what has survived until now, ( several others live recordings have been lost many years ago ), is affected by a poor audio quality, due to the fact that only a cassette tape machine with just two microphones was used for recording , so distortion and saturation on the tape was often the result.
Unluckily, the rare good recordings on reel-tape masters have disappeared in misterious circumstances many years ago.
In 1988 I cared to recover as much audio material as possible from these old concerts so I put together a double CD ( Live in Recoaro Terme 1985 Vol. 1 & 2 ) and one single CD ( San Bonifacio's Night ), definitely with a better audio quality than the old cassette tapes. Anyway, though I tried my best, the overall sound quality of the tracks is still rather poor.
In the Spring of 1986, after having an agreement and signing a recording deal with Antonio Ferro, ( owner of the "Fireball" music management agency ) and after getting an pre-recording deal from the Discotto metal label of Milan, XIPE went back in the studio to record "FLY OF PHOENIX", an album which should contain some new songs and some rearranged classics of their repertoire.
Unfortunately, shortly after having completed the recordings, there were suddenly many troubles that prevented the album from being released, the major one being that the Discotto label had suddenly gone bankrupt. We were deeply discouraged by this event , so much that Pietro Albanese decided to quit and join AXE HERO. Moreover, drummer Paolo Urbani, decided for personal reasons to stop playing soon after the recording sessions.
Having lost two essential members the band stopped working but resumed its activities several months later with a trial line-up including the drummer and one guitarist from HEAVY KRISTAL, respectively Giovanni Anzolin and Paolo Ciscato, plus the three original XIPE members: Adriano Valente, Tony Garello and myself.
We wrote a new repertoire which was darker in style, as the band with the new members was moving in this direction. Sadly, after a musically interesting but economically failed concert , due to poor public participation, the band definitely ceased its activities in January 1988.
Diego Benetti
