This is where I belong

Sometimes I feel like I don't belong to anywhere. This happens since I was a teenager. I make too many questions, I have too many doubts about life and people. And being like that makes you different in most of the places you go. But when I started to go to punk/hardcore shows I found a place to feel better. After more than ten years living this life, living hardcore every single day, I can say it's not perfect and it's far from being a perfect “world”. I could write a lot of things (good and bad) but that's not the point here.

I'd like to write about one awesome thing I learnt going to hardcore shows: it was where I received all the first informations about veganism and animal rights and because of that I became vegan.

I started to go to hardcore shows not that young. I wasn't a teenager anymore. But I realized that there were (still) some things that I should change in my life. It was really easy to find bands and people talking about straight edge, veganism and also about social and politic issues. And I loved it. I stopped drinking and smoking and became vegan. After some time I started to write a fanzine (that I still write nowadays, a paper zine called Outspoken) and after some years I started a band (Out of Step) and then another one (Overstate).



In the late 80s, bands like Youth of Today started to associate straight edge with vegetarianism, also in their lyrics: "Meat-eating, flesh-eating, think about it. So callous this crime we commit". In the early 90s, most of the straight edge kids became vegan, with bands like Earth Crisis and Path of Resistance promoting the vegan edge.

Youth of Today

Earth Crisis

Now it is not that usual to find hardcore bands that also talk about or spread the vegetarianism/veganism in the hardcore scene, but there are some good examples around the world.

Even seeing a lot of people in hardcore giving up on veganism/vegetarianism, I can see new kids getting into it. And this is awesome. It means that, in some way, hardcore can still spread the word and make people think about their choices. I still believe in my choice. You can always see me at a hardcore show, there is where I belong.

“Just because you're not 21, that's not supposed to mean you can't have any fun. So, come out and raise your fists high, stage dive, and forget about what they say. Dance the night away.” (Kid Dynamite)

Wonderful colours and flavours in my life

"We are what we are till the day we die"

My post today starts with a piece of a Rise Against song in the title. I didn't write here about how music is important to me and that it was going to hardcore shows that I learnt everything I know about veganism. But this is a long history, for another post.

Today I'd like to just write a little about this band and share one lyric with everybody that comes here. They are an American punk rock band, from Chicago, formed in 1999. I saw them live at the beginning of February in Berlin and it was awesome. Two thousand people singing their songs. I Didn't know that they were so big.


The group members are vegans and active supporters of Peta2. There was a group of Peta2 people at the show in Berlin too. “Their video (below) for the single “Ready to Fall” addresses environmental degradation and its effect on animals, as well as animal cruelty inherent in factory farming and sport hunting.” (thanks Wikipedia). They support other political causes too and have really awesome lyrics.

These days I'm listening too much their last album, “Appeal to Reason”, and it's off it the lyric that I want to share with you. As I always say, being vegan is try to make the world better too. I'm not perfect but I'm doing the best I can.

Collapse (Post-Amerika)

When our rivers run dry and our crops cease to grow
When our summers grow longer and winters won't snow
From the banks of the ocean and the ice in the hills
To the fight in the desert where progress stands still

When we've lost our will
That's how we'll know
This is not a test, oh no
This is cardiac arrest
Of a world too proud to admit our mistakes
We're crashing into the ground as we all fall from grace

When the air that we breathe becomes air that we choke
When the marsh fever spreads from the swamps to our homes
When your home on the range has been torn down and paved
And the buffalo roam to a slaughterhouse grave
What more will it take

For us to know
This is not a test, oh no
This is cardiac arrest
Of a world too proud to admit our mistakes
Kissing the ground as we all fall from grace

This is a chance to set things straight
To bend or break the rules back into place
There is no middle ground, no compromise
We've drawn the line
With perfect aim, we stand back and throw
Glass windows break and it's all about to blow
Lights go out as we pass the torch again
In hope that is stays lit

Neutrality means that you don't really care
Cuz the struggle goes on even when you're not there
Blind and unaware

That's how we'll know
This is not a test, oh no
This is cardiac arrest
Of a world too proud to admit our mistakes
We're crashing into the ground as we all, yeah we all, all fall from grace

PS. This post is also to an amazing friend that always helps me to see the good side of everything and she loves Rise Against. Cinthia, thanks for being part of my life!

Fruit salad days

I'm pretty sure that I never wrote about fruits here. I like them. I love some of them. I just prefer when food or drinks with fruits come ready because I am a little bit lazy to prepare it. But in this my new life doing nothing all day full of inspiration in the kitchen I started to wrap up more fruity stuff!

So in these last days I'm preparing fruit salads for me and Matteo in the evening. It's a delicious way to eat at the right times (remember, it's always good to eat every 3 hours). One of the fruits that I love are strawberries. They're delicious ever and ever. And here it is easy to find them because of the cold weather. I didn't use all the fruits of this amazing picture that I found in the Internet to make our fruit salads. Just apple, banana and strawberry and it was enough. Well, to Matteo I added sugar and soy cream but I ate just the fruits.

Also with fruits, it is good to pay attention to the colours in your plate to guarantee vitamins. And here we go with some minerals and vitamins the fruits we ate this week have:

Apple: potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, selenium, vitamins A, C, E and folic acid (important during pregnancy).

Banana: potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, selenium, iron, vitamins A, C, B6, E, niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5) and folic acid.

Strawberry: potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, selenium, iron, manganese, vitamins A, C and folic acid.

Did you eat any fruit today?

For the Earth, the Oceans and all form of life

Here I am to spread some great news: the Italian hardcore band TO KILL, from Rome, is releasing a CD with to songs to support the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society:


"Evoking the Maelström

The defense of the animal rights always had an essential place in every heartbeat in To Kill. We always tried to spread this value as much as we could with every tool we had. through our songs, talking at our shows, in the interviews we did..... this, together with some other ideals, was a key issue of the band, as important as our music.

During all these years involved in the enviromentalist movement we've got to know so many organizations and collectives, together with a huge amount of hearts filled with this passion that we also share.

Of all those organization there was one that always caught our interest and that always received our support as individuals: the SEA SHEPHERD CONSERVATION SOCIETY. Since 1977 these people fight every day putting their lives in danger for what they believe in, defending the oceans and the wildlife from the violence that sometimes (more and more often actually) mankind is able to create. With direct action and passion as their main weapons in reaching their goals,with the lead of Captain Paul Watson, this group of bravehearts deserves all of our support.
So We decided to release a mcd and devolve all the income to this organization to support them in their daily struggles so that we can help them in their endeavour with what we have: the chance to express through the hardcore scene.

So we are writing this announcing to all of you the release of MAELSTRÖM. 2 new heavy and honest songs which are 120% Tokill.

We are really happy to share with you the first material we have done for our new record which is coming out in fall. these 2 songs are, as usual, the result of everything we are, we tried to push ourselves to the best of what we can, putting our hearts and our blood into our music.

To these new songs we added and old "classic" re-recorded to which we also added something new: the song "1001 days" which was the first song off our first record. and since we wanted something more we will also have a bonus track with a spoken word from none the less than Greg from Trial and Between Earth and Sky and music from our friend Christian Di Vito (myspace.com/christiandivito). We are so happy Greg agreed to work with us since he has been with his band and his lyrics source of inspiration in our hc life, so with this occasion we also had the chance to get to know him better or, for some of us, to know him for the first time in our life, and we are really thankful of having him as a friend... Greg is also going to be our guest vocalist in one of the songs and this is simply amazing to us.

The recordings have been done with the help of our friend Alex JM @ HellSmell studio, and mixed and mastered from Riccardo Pasini @ Studio73 (Ephel Dual, Memoryes of Apocalypse, This is a Stand off).

We have to express our gratitude to Matteo@Nexus Enterprises and Lexi@Desperate Days Designworks for taking care of all the visual aspects of this release, lending their precious time to the cause and wanting nothing more in return than being a part of this project.

Special thanks go out to Theo and Rob@Gsr records for letting us do this release in complete freedom and for always being more than supportive with us.

The cd sounds amazing and we really had a hard time deciding which song to put on myspace due to the fact that to us they are both amazing, heavy and catchy even if they are different one another.

Maelström will be totally self produced just to be sure that all the money will go for the benefit and at our shows you can obviously decide to overpay it and we will make sure everything will go to Sea Shepherd.

Make sure you'll get your own copy, support them with all the help you can give them and if you don't know the sea shepherd conservation society, please check them out.



MAELSTRÖM will be released in the end of april but stay tuned to find out a preorder and an online way to get a copy. it will obviously be available at all of our shows as well.

For the Earth, the Oceans and all form of life."

Fast and delicious III

It seems that this week is all about fast food. Today I cooked a lasagne with eggplant and it's delicious. No need to say how much I love lasagne and all the Italian food! You can use the eggplant instead of the lasagne pasta, but this time I used both and I liked it more.

So, here we go, with one more recipe:

- lasagne pasta (that one that comes ready to cook)
- 1 eggplant
- tomato sauce
- vegetable stock cube
- soya cream
- vegan cheese (I used the cheddar one)
- dairy free parmezano

This recipe takes between 5 and 10 minutes to be prepared! Cut the eggplant in small circular slices. Let it fry a little bit in the pan. Add the tomato sauce and the vegetable stock cube. Use a little bit of tomato sauce to make the first layer in a glass pan. Add the eggplant sauce. Add the lasagne pasta. Do alternate layers like that (three or four, depends of how much eggplant sauce you have).

Topping: add the last layer of eggplant sauce, than the soy cream and the vegan cheese.

Final touch: add the dairy free parmezano (you can use breadcrumbs too, it works).

Put in the oven for 30/35 minutes (180ºC). That's it!

Fast and delicious II

Some times all we want is something easy and fast to cook to eat. This is a delicious food, that seems to be something between a pizza and a bruschetta!


And all you need is:

- bread (if you have an Italian one, better!)
- spinach
- tomatoes
- garlic
- tomato sauce (optional)
- herbs
- extra virgin olive oil

Put everything over the bread (if you decide to use the tomatoe sauce, add it first with small slices of garlic). Bake it for 5 minutes and it's done ;o)