Date Signed: March 2025
Label: Eclipse Records
Type of Music: Post-Groove Metal
Management: Chris Poland, Eclipse Records
Booking: Chris Poland
Publicity: Chris Poland, press@eclipserecords.com
A&R: Chris Poland
Web: facebook.com/noumeniaband
Go ahead, denigrate the current state of the music industry until you get a sore throat, but it still has the power to strike young artists with an out-of-nowhere jolt of limitless delight, hope, and optimism at a moment’s notice. Just a few months ago in Northern Italy, a band that had just formed—after encountering each other on social media— got struck by such a bolt of lightning. When we caught up with the four members of metal band Noumenia, mere weeks after they inked a deal with St. Paul, MN's Eclipse Records, they were all still shocked.
“We initially wrote songs in a totally different rock genre, when we started playing years ago,” guitarist Matteo Radaelli recalls in the band’s first-ever interview with a music journalist. “But then we met Lacuna Coil’s drummer, Richard Meiz, who [published] posts on social media saying he was looking for bands to produce.”
Radaelli, lead vocalist Vivian Nigro, bassist Matteo Campagnoli, and drummer Samuele Zichi seized on the opportunity and, before they knew it, found themselves performing in front of one of their heavy-metal heroes: Richard Meiz. Maybe because they gave it their all, or because the four musicians connected with Meiz personality-wise, the first song they made with him (“Fall Apart”) “was the best song we’d ever written,” Radaelli recalls. “From there, we continued working with Richard, and he wound up producing our album.”
When Noumenia joined forces with Meiz, “We’d show him our ideas, and he’d say, ‘They’re really good—and I can work on them and make the record sound even better,’” according to Campagnoli.
Meiz clearly wasn’t BS-ing the Italian band, because once they had laid down enough material, he got in touch with his friend, Chris Poland, who happens to be the founder and president of Eclipse Records.
“Despite the band being really new on the scene, I just had to get involved because the band is already pumping out music of such extraordinary quality,” Poland says.
For his own part, drummer Zichi—the biggest metal fan in the group— was surprised at the coherence of Nomenia’s sound even though the songs are rather dense in form.
“I’m really happy with our chemistry,” Zichi notes.
As for Nigro, she chimes in with the most aptly declarative statements of the entire conversation: “It’s unreal.”
