Italian symphonic power metallers TEMPERANCE return on October 16 with their eighth studio album, Arcani, through Napalm Records, and this time the band have finally stepped into a world that has been hiding in plain sight around their own name for more than a decade.
Built around thirteen cards from the Major Arcana, Arcani is not a traditional concept album in the same way as 2023’s Hermitage – Daruma’s Eyes Pt. 2. Instead, Tarot becomes a way into some very human territory, with mortality, temptation, fear, change, forgiveness and resilience all running through a record that Marco Pastorino describes as something of a return to Temperance’s roots.
I recently caught up with Marco, guitarist, vocalist and main songwriter for Temperance, to talk about the album, the chemistry of the current lineup and how more than 100 shows together have changed what the band can now bring into the studio. We also got into Kristin Starkey’s expanded role as lyricist, the very real fire behind “Death: Right Before We Die,” why “The Tower: Lean Into Fear” broke away from the usual Temperance formula and the challenge of taking such a layered record onto the stage.
Before we got anywhere near Tarot, though, I took Marco back to his own beginning. His earliest memory of music truly grabbing him came at around eleven years old when Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” came over the radio at his grandmother’s house. Marco was already learning classical guitar, but that song was the moment that pushed him towards electric guitar, rock music and ultimately the road that would lead to Temperance.
A DIFFERENT TEMPERANCE WALKED INTO ARCANI
The biggest difference between Hermitage and Arcani is not simply the subject matter. Hermitage was built as one continuous story across fourteen tracks, with six characters and additional vocalists brought in to give each role its own identity. Arcani still has the Major Arcana tying everything together, but each song can stand independently, allowing Marco to move back towards the tighter and more direct style he associates with earlier Temperance while still pushing the symphonic side further.
There is also a much more settled band behind this album. Hermitage was Kristin Starkey’s first record with Temperance, but the years since have given the current lineup more than 100 shows together. Marco now knows Kristin’s range inside out, understands exactly where Michele Guaitoli can take a part, and has a much clearer picture of how all three vocalists can work around one another rather than simply stacking voices because they are available.
That chemistry became particularly important during the vocal sessions. Marco, Kristin and Michele spent around five days together in the studio, giving themselves room to experiment and change ideas instead of treating the original demo as something carved in stone. One of the biggest examples came with “The Tower: Lean Into Fear,” which had originally been envisioned with vocal parts shared between Kristin and Michele before Marco realised in the studio that the song needed Kristin to take control.
THREE VOICES, BUT THE SONG STILL COMES FIRST
Temperance having three distinct singers gives Marco a ridiculous amount of colour to work with. Kristin naturally covers much of the higher, operatic and metal territory, Michele brings a more theatrical and power metal character, while Marco sees his own voice sitting closer to rock, soul, AOR and pop influenced territory.
What matters, though, is that none of those roles are fixed. Marco may finish a demo already hearing a particular singer in a section, but the band are happy to throw that plan away once recording starts if another voice serves the song better. As he put it during our conversation, “the most important thing is the song.”
That attitude gives Arcani room to breathe in ways that might not have happened on an earlier Temperance record. The band have three voices, orchestration, huge harmonies and plenty of ways to make everything enormous, but this time there seems to be a stronger understanding that having those weapons does not mean they all need to be fired at once.
THE DEVIL MAKES TEMPTATION SOUND PRETTY DAMN GOOD
The first single, “The Devil: Sin, Sin, Sin,” was an obvious place to dig into that relationship between music and theme. The lyrics explore temptation and that familiar image of the Devil sitting on your shoulder, pushing you towards the thing you know you probably should not do, but musically Temperance make the temptation sound incredibly inviting.
That enormous chorus is deliberately built like an anthem, which is exactly why the band chose it to introduce Arcani. There is something perfectly fitting about a song centred on temptation being one of the catchiest tracks used to launch the record, with the music itself almost doing the same job as the Devil in the lyric by pulling the listener closer.
The song also highlights just how significant Kristin’s creative role has become. She wrote the lyrics across Arcani, and Marco feels her perspective as a native English speaker has expanded the vocabulary and imagery available to Temperance. He was refreshingly open about the fact that he and Michele could sometimes fall back on familiar English phrases in earlier material, while Kristin has been able to bring different metaphors and a more personal edge into the writing.
That personal element matters because Temperance have always carried plenty of positivity in their music, but Arcani does not pretend that positivity means ignoring the darker parts of life. Marco spoke openly about life being difficult at times and wanting Temperance to share those moments with listeners as well, rather than offering some permanently smiling version of reality.
“THE TOWER” BREAKS THE TEMPERANCE FORMULA
If “The Devil” leans into the anthem side of the band, “The Tower: Lean Into Fear” goes somewhere noticeably different. The Tower itself represents upheaval and destruction, and there is something fitting about Temperance using that card for a song that disrupts some of their own established musical habits.
It is much more direct and hard rock driven, with Kristin given the space to show a side of her voice that Temperance had not really explored before. Marco told me that the track was originally intended to be shared between Kristin and Michele, but once the band got into the studio her American delivery and natural rock attack made it obvious that she should take the song herself.
The instrumentation breaks convention too. Marco revealed that “Lean Into Fear” is the first Temperance song without orchestration, keyboards or piano, replacing those layers with a ridiculous number of guitars instead. It might sound stripped back compared with the usual symphonic framework, but there is still a hell of a lot happening underneath it.
“RIGHT BEFORE WE DIE” STARTED WITH A REAL FIRE
The story behind “Death: Right Before We Die” is easily one of the wildest moments on Arcani, because this one began long before anybody decided which Tarot card belonged beside it.
Temperance had been performing on the Sabaton Cruise when Marco, Kristin, drummer Marco Sacchetto and members of their travelling party stopped at a medieval style restaurant in Tallinn. The place was filled with candles, they were having a great time, and then suddenly the restaurant caught fire. Staff began yelling for everybody to get outside, turning what had been a relaxed meal into a very real evacuation.
Everyone made it out safely, and the story took another turn the following day when Kristin sent Marco a photo taken shortly before the fire with a joking comment about it being taken “right before we die.” The phrase instantly stuck with him, and while travelling home from the cruise he began hearing the foundation of what would become the song.
That origin makes the finished track even more interesting because it never becomes completely swallowed by darkness. Mortality sits right at its centre, but there is also something life affirming in the way the song opens up, almost as though coming that close to something frightening made the idea of being alive in that moment feel even stronger.
Marco’s songwriting process helped preserve that original feeling. He normally creates the instrumental arrangements and vocal melodies before sending demos to Kristin with working titles, placeholder phrases and occasionally rough lyrics to establish how everything should flow. Sometimes those temporary ideas are strong enough to survive into the finished song, and “Right Before We Die” became one of those moments.
FROM NEW YORK TO SWEDEN TO AN ITALIAN METAL BAND
That same process helped shape “The Chariot: Alla Ricerca dell’America.” The title was already attached to Marco’s early idea, but once Kristin began building the final lyric it became something far more personal and ended up reflecting the strange international path her own life has taken.
Kristin grew up in New York, now lives in Sweden and sings in an Italian band, so the finished track naturally started drawing those different worlds together. The lyrics move between languages as well, with Swedish joining Italian and English as the song mirrors somebody whose idea of “home” can no longer be tied neatly to a single country.
Marco described the finished piece almost as a testament to Kristin’s journey. New York will always be part of where she came from, Sweden is now home and Italy has become another major piece of her life through Temperance, giving the song a level of personal meaning that was not necessarily there when the original working title first appeared.
GIVING ARCANI ANOTHER LIFE ON STAGE
Creating all those layers in the studio is one thing. Reproducing them every night without becoming a band standing in front of an enormous backing track is another challenge entirely.
Marco made it clear that Temperance are not interested in filling their live set with endless prerecorded parts simply because the album contains orchestration, large choirs and stacked guitars. Having three singers means they can reproduce a huge amount of the harmony themselves, while the live arrangements can focus on the elements that actually matter instead of attempting to copy every studio detail note for note.
“The Tower” presents a particularly funny problem because Marco stacked around eight guitar layers into parts of the studio recording while remaining the band’s only regular guitarist. Michele may pick up a guitar alongside him for the live version, but as Marco joked, hiring enough guitarists to reproduce every layer would probably mean hiring another tour bus to carry them all.
Rather than seeing those limitations as a compromise, Marco sounds excited about what they might do to the songs. His view is that “every track will deserve another life” in the live environment, allowing the arrangements to change and become something different when Temperance finally put them in front of an audience.
THE FOOL OPENS THE NEXT DOOR
With “The Devil,” “Death” and “The Tower” already showing three very different sides of Arcani, I finished by asking Marco which of the remaining songs he was most excited for people to discover.
Choosing only one was never going to be easy, but he eventually landed on “The Fool.” The track opens the album and, at the time of our conversation, was also lined up as the next single. Marco believes power metal fans in particular are going to find plenty to love in it, and he seemed genuinely excited to see what happens once listeners finally get their hands on the song.
That excitement probably sums up Temperance heading into Arcani better than anything else. Eight albums into their career, this does not sound like a band trying to settle comfortably into a formula. Instead, the current lineup seems more confident in knowing when to go huge, when to pull things back and, most importantly, when to let the song decide what Temperance needs to be.
Arcani arrives October 16 through Napalm Records.
Pre-order / order Arcani:
https://lnk.to/Temperance-Arcani/napalmrecords
Watch the full interview with Marco Pastorino of Temperance above, crank the singles loud and keep an ear out for “The Fool” as the next piece of the Arcani puzzle lands.
The neighbours are probably going to want to hear this one too.
