MESCHALINA started its activity in 1998 as a Rage Against The Machine cover band. The band was then made up of 4 boys: Vittorio Pignatelli (drums), Francesco Quintiliani (bass), Stefano Teatini (vocals), Matteo Valente (guitar). After having played many gigs which have been very important for the musical growth of the band, Meschalina recorded (in 1999) its first live demo thanks to the precious help of the Music Hall's producers who had noticed the 4 boys from Rome during one of their most important concerts of that year. They really appreciated the 4 guys and decided to produce the demo (whose title was Fight the war! Fuck the norm!) for them. The demo, which contained 10 covers by R.A.T.M. and was distributed through underground channels, assured the band good promotional success and encouraged the guys to go further in their musical career by starting to compose their own songs. Its around this time Antonella Montinaro (synths) joined the band. Meschalina strongly wanted her to contribute to the creation of their new sound which they wanted to be an extremely original one, different from that of R.A.T.M., although inspired by the Californian band's music and combining "rap-metal" rage with the deep atmosphere of electronic music. Meschalina's first demo containing unpublished songs was recorded by the band itself in 2000. Its title was Shut Up and it contained 3 songs. This time the demo is a self-production recorded in Meschalina's private recording studio. Even if the production was not excellent, the demo earned for the 5 musicians a lot of good reviews on the best Italian web-zines and the interest of many people working in the music business. Encouraged by the great success of their demo Shut Up, the band decided to produce another, longer demo. It was again a self-production, but it was characterized by a better production than Shut up. The demo (2001), Homonymous, recorded this time too in Meschalina's private recording studio, contained 8 unpublished songs and its aim was to promote the band in Italian magazines, web-zines, radio, etc. Not committing again the same technical mistakes of the previous demo Shut Up in matter of production, it earned the band a moderate level of success from critics. Enthusiastic reviews about the work of the Roman band started to appear in such magazines as ROCKSOUND, TUTTO MUSICA, METAL SHOCK, ROCKERILLA, PSYCHO and many others. The strong promotion obtained in this way obtained for the band the inclusion of their last single in two important compilations distributed in Italy (PUNK & CONTAMINAZIONI, vol.2 Sana records/Audioglobe distributions- and Italian Experiences, vol. 3 Path of experiences records-) and the sponsor that was to decide their future: the independent cooperative society MILITANT which would have produced, in 2003, Something 2 Die 4, the debut EP of Meschalina's new line-up. Eventually in 2005, Meschalina recorded and released their first full length album, The Flight of Icarus, which finally displayed the maturity and growth the band had achieved over the years. Currently working on new CD, but little has been heard of them outside of Italy since their debut full length. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.