Fox Conspiracy
Massimiliano Bertagna

As we approach 2024, Massi The King draws from personal energy and artistic vigor, shifts into higher gear, and launches a fresh, aligned punk & roll combo, the Fox Conspiracy, christening the project with several live dates already scheduled across the boot-shaped country.

Massimiliano Bertagna, bassist and co-founder of King Mastino (and former Fall Out) with five albums produced from 2009 to 2017, has achieved considerable on-stage satisfaction and sales within the underground circuit, which has led them, thanks to a passionate and continuous activity, to create a lively and solid fanbase in Europe.

The King Mastino adventure will conclude after the release of their last album, Medusa, although Massimiliano recruits an original and rough lineup of players from the music scene in La Spezia, which, due to the pandemic, will not take off as expected, yet still recalling some gritty dates played in Italy.

I have the pleasure of chatting with the founder of the invigorating Fox Conspiracy, the multifaceted (he's also a Star Chef operating in the La Spezia area) Massi The King, ready to tell us about his new band (and a life evolving with great excitement).

1. Hi Massi, great to see you kicking harder at life and shaping it according to your visions and passions. Right off the bat: Fox Conspiracy, what input do you convey when looking at the logo, a fusion between a fox and an alien's face, and what suggestion accompanies the band's name?

Hi Bob, it's nice to be here still chasing life. Two things I want to clarify, I'm not starred, even though I do TV shows, and in Fox I'm a co-founder along with Lorenzo, ex-Smoking Bones.
The scenario that Fox Conspiracy paints comes from the passion Lorenzo and I have for the TV series "X Files," so even the logo refers to that ambiguous world where things or characters are often hard to focus on, like those situations where Fox (the protagonist of the series, ed.) was searching for conspiracies.

2. Please introduce us to the band: a succinct curriculum...

Lorenzo (guitar and vocals) and I (bass, vocals) started the idea that was buzzing in our heads; Jacopo (guitar), on the other hand, was already a member of Sunday Sermon. Finally, Leonardo (drums) is a discovery, the youngest among us, and I found him four years ago; he was supposed to play in the last version of King Mastino, but then, as noted, covid ruined everything. Luckily, I remembered him, and he is now in the band. I tell you, Bob, they are really capable musicians, and it's a pleasure to play with them, sharp and raw just right.

3. Your heart beats in the area related to punk, rock, with stints into metal. I wouldn't ask you to categorize Fox Conspiracy in a predefined category as much as to identify the inspirational references to your sonic tastes that have rightfully entered your music...

We dabble in the same musical area, some more toward metal, some more seventies rock-influenced, and rather than garage rock or punk rock, we say our musical baggage coexists and feeds Fox. We are an r&r band for the most part, hard rock&roll. All good like that.

4. I've had the privilege to listen to the first promotional track, Satisfied: compared to King Mastino you seem less 'compressed', the music has a more expansive texture, suggesting greater accessibility thanks to its usability, whereas KM were still remarkably propulsive and dense, emphasizing a more genuine impact, while now you seem to moderate the sonic matter more between hard, rock, and punk articulations.

Well, the story of King Mastino tended to veer pleasantly towards dark and severe atmospheres, very challenging in making the lyrics adhere to the musical part. KM's rock did not give in to too many compromises.
Fox Conspiracy, on the other hand, have a decidedly r&r approach, the guitar arrangements are very sharp and recall a street, glam imagery.
KM were an important part of my life; when covid stopped everything it was tough, as it was for all bands, to stay upright; unfortunately, we didn't manage to overcome that sad moment; Lorenzo also experienced a similar story with his Smoking Bones, but we kept in touch by phone expressing the mutual desire to reclaim the world, the one that belongs to us by nature. And now we have a good road ahead, traced by the will to play and leave a personal mark; it will be up to us to walk it.

5. While the launch activity is fervent, share with us the dates you have scheduled, while certainly more will be added...

After the Skalletta date (Skaletta Rock Club) on December 26th, we'll be playing a secret show in Tuscany, a private party, and in March we have another two dates.

6. You've been a cook for several decades. How do you manage to completely involve yourself and live both the rocker dimension and the master chef at the stove? Recently I see your Facebook reels that anticipate TV episodes where, wearing the toque, white coat, and ladle in hand, you prepare and narrate typical recipes from La Spezia and surroundings. The range of proactivity that distinguishes you and that you express along these multiple assets make you a person engaged on all fronts, not to mention the narrative engagement on the 'football & music' front, and then family, friends...

The kitchen and the band are two incredibly similar worlds, you have to play as a team, everyone has their own task and everyone must perform it well and in harmony with the rest of the crew... just like on stage, everyone must carry out their task and if in the end the result is enjoyable, the applause is for everyone.
I collaborate with a television station, Antenna 3 Toscana (the channel of the province of Massa-Carrara), and I am working on a show dedicated to the eno-gastronomic tradition of my areas, also a nice historical research project.
I am very passionate about football and collaborate with an online newspaper "Calcio ed altre storie". I like to live my passions, hoping to encourage my children to look beyond the proposals suggested by trends.
I find time because I want to find it, everything I do I like and belongs to me, so I owe it respect. Sometimes I think of things and try to understand if I can develop them; if the matter presents itself well, I move to transmit the stimulus, the spirit, should I understand who, around me, might be interested. Above all, I try to stimulate partners who have something to say. It's not easy these days, trends and new communication media, for example, seem to have taken many away from the underground rock world.

7. Remembering your experience in Fall Out (a historical Italian hardcore band born in La Spezia), in the album "Americananti" (2004) you are on bass, vocals and write most of the lyrics, would you like to highlight something from that strong experience?
What does it mean to you to be a rocker: yesterday, today and... tomorrow?

My experience in Fall Out was the key to doing everything I do with self-determination. In the band, I was the youngest and I learned a lot, treasuring from the context, especially to defend my freedom.
Being a rocker today means being there, keeping the scene alive, feeling that the stage belongs to you, feeling part of the same family as Lemmy and the Ramones, the Stooges or the Birdman, knowing that with my records I have contributed in some small way of grains of sand to form that beach I believe in. I feel I belong to rock.

8. Back to Fox Conspiracy. On closer inspection, perhaps, there is a stadium component that seems to belong to you, bolstered by your football faith - for the Toro - and extended to that of your bandmates?

If this football component were to emerge, I think it would do so involuntarily, because I think I'm the only Fox who supports a club team without limits (laughs, ed.).

9. Do you feel free venturing down the path you have carved and that you have set in motion, that is, spreading that feeling of vitality and musical breadth that embraces important sensations in the wake of New Christ, Radio Birdman and the early Australian punk, constants of the second part of your career after the Fall Out?

Yes, we feel absolutely free, we don't need nor feel the need to prove anything to anyone. We do what we like, clearly our stylistic ties are strong, so the field in which we move is conceptually delineated, however, not by self-imposition, but by a logical consequence of our stories and personal attitudes.

10. Question for Lorenzo. What have you sacrificed musically by leaving Smoking Bones and embracing Fox, what motivated you for this change, not totally of perspective?

Actually, it wasn't a sacrifice since the live activity of Smoking Bones had been on standby for a while; musically it was about completely freeing the part of the composition and testing myself as a singer as well as a guitarist. The decision to found this new project with Massimiliano came very spontaneously and naturally, as we both still have the desire and energy to spend on stage.

11. Massi, what do you think of social media, DIY web press, and the connection with band self-promotion offered by these tools. What do you think of the digital world: do you think this freedom of communication flattens the musical world, where everyone can do almost everything, including using artificial intelligence?

The digital world has been a trap, it would have been great if used as an additional tool for knowledge and not as a replacement, of vinyls, for example.
Surely it seems to be a futuristic tool. However, as far as promotion and communication speed are concerned, there are positive and negative aspects, one must have the insight to use everything, digital and analog, otherwise the risk is to decontextualize the music. In the car, I can turn on Spotify, it's convenient for me, but, when I'm within my four walls, vinyl has no equal, because the object binds and roots me to that environment and imagery, it's the medium, or the link, if you prefer.
For me, self-production means always having a chance not to have to compromise, it represents a valid alternative, don't you think?!
Regarding artificial intelligence: I fear it, not because it could, or can play bass better than me, but because I think it plays it without soul, to the detriment of a non-sensitive, non-emotional process, rather resulting from a mishmash of inputs that average out and whose purpose is to satisfy a requested criterion, referring to that genre which is asked to create music of a certain type and with certain characteristics.

Thank you Massimiliano, Massi The King, happy holidays and best wishes!