In-Depth with ‘Gatto Black’ — No Longer Hiding, Sal Mastrocola Bares his Soul on Powerful New Album, ‘Sky is Blue’

(EDITOR’S NOTE — For Sal Mastrocola, the mastermind behind hardcore/emo project Gatto Black, the band’s new LP ‘Sky is Blue’ is more than just an album. It is quite literally a liberation. Sal Mastrocola is finally free — free from the religious and culturally imposed shame that has haunted him for decades, and free — for the first time in his life — to truly be himself. ‘Sky is Blue’ chronicles Mastrocola’s struggle with confronting and accepting his sexuality, a struggle needlessly — but too familiarly — exacerbated by others’ bullshit moral doctrines. Mastrocola, however, has not only finally overcome that struggle; he has turned it on its head, using it as the inspiration in creating a courageous 11-track debut LP that is intense, visceral and savagely honest. ‘Sky is Blue’ was recorded, mixed and mastered by Gary Cioni of the Long Island hardcore punk band Crime in Stereo. “He had a really deep foundational understanding of what I was trying to do,” Mastrocola said of Cioni. “He has the most impeccable judgment.” Also skillfully enabling Mastrocola to bring his vision to life on ‘Sky is Blue’ was his band, consisting of drummer/producer Mike Hansen (Hotel Etiquette, Pentimento), guitarist Josh Martin (Thought Trials) and bassist Christian Adams (Jeweltone). “I’ve been so fucking spoiled,” Mastrocola said of his fortune in hooking up with the three Buffalo musicians. Below is our conversation with Mastrocola, to whom we are grateful for sharing his powerful story. The interview has been abridged and edited for clarity. ‘Sky is Blue’ is available on streaming platforms. You can purchase the album on vinyl at Triple Hammer Records HERE, where you’ll also find other merch. The release is available too in digital format on Bandcamp HERE. Follow Gatto Black HERE. — Photo by Matt Sledz)

1120 PRESS: Thank you for speaking with us and congratulations on the new album! This is a very heavy record and there’s a lot to talk about. But first, the LP’s been done for a while; how does it feel now that it’s finally been released?

SAL MASTROCOLA: That's actually a really intense question to start with, believe it or not. Short answer: it feels amazing to know it's out because I've never tried harder or made a better piece of art in my life. I really want people to hear this album. I finished it this past May; started recording it in May 2024 over five days, then went back a few months later in August for five more days. By the time it got mixed and all that, it was probably spring. So, yeah, it's been quite a journey.

1120: Like we indicated, the subject matter on this record is pretty heavy. Is this a concept album?

SM: Yes and no. It didn't really start off with that intention, but I was talking to Mike Hansen, who plays drums in the band and is in the amazing bands Pentimento and Hotel Etiquette. We were just discussing albums that we loved and what we wanted this album to sound like. Modern Life is War came up. But a band that we kept coming back to is Have Heart — a sort of modernish hardcore band. Mike was saying how their albums just sound like someone looked you in the face and said, ‘Tell the truth!’ And I was like, ‘shit, you're right.’ And I started thinking about what I wanted this album to be and it ended up being kind of a concept album about coming out of the closet, and my kind of youth journey and coming of age kind in the Catholic church and being queer and sort of just dealing with all the darkness that I dealt with and finding some kind of way out of that.

So, when I was writing, I was kind of just diving back into all these experiences that I never really processed — especially certainly not in an artistic fashion. Maybe I had thought about these things on some level. But I'd never written songs about them directly. I'd always sort of used metaphors or whatever. This was the first time where I was actually like, ‘Let me write about how it felt that night when I actually thought about killing myself. Let me go back there.’

One of the first songs I wrote for the album was ‘You Can't Make Me Dance.’ I was just starting to explore these issues a little bit and thinking about the control that the church imposes onto people, and how that led me as a closeted queer person to try to control everything while I was also being controlled. Like I had to puppet everyone's reactions in my life and control everything so that I wouldn't out myself. I just kept kind of going deeper and deeper with all that.

1120: We noticed on your socials you said that in the past on your earlier songs, you word sort of hint about these subjects and approach them metaphorically but you've never been so direct and honest until now. Was it difficult for you to finally lay yourself so bare?

SM: I think what was more difficult was before this album, and before I really wrote any of these songs, the only person who I was out to was my wife, honestly, and my very close family members — siblings really. So, it was freeing in a way to be able to talk about this stuff because it was just kind of like, ‘well, I can be truthful. I've already won at this point, you know?’ And I think my sort of lens with every song was to just try and express my feelings in as raw or natural a way as possible. I would write the music and then I would have a general idea of what the song was about. And a lot of the lyrics just ended up being the first thing that I wrote down. I wasn't trying to hide anything.

1120: Given the subject matter on this album and your personal struggle, how long do you think that you had this album inside of you just waiting to come out?

SM: Oh my god. I mean, I've been writing songs since I was in college. And a big part of the reason why I think I started writing songs was I wanted to express myself and be an artist, but a lot of it too was to keep myself busy so I didn't have to think about this shit, and I didn't have to think about who I really was. Writing songs was a thing I could pour my energy into. It felt safe and creative and it was a healing way to process things. So, I was always writing about this stuff. But I think around the time I started Gatto Black, I came out to my wife like shortly after that. The second I started writing for this project, which was right after COVID around 2021, I really felt like I was grappling with a lot of this stuff and I finally was able to admit all of this to myself.

So, I knew what the intention of this project was from the jump: To tap into all the music that really lit me up and carried me through when I was a young teenager and into my early 20s, which is when I was dealing with my internalized homophobia. This was at its most visceral and violent and intense kind of time. I don't know if I knew it at the time, but tapping into this project was a step toward being able to talk about it freely. On the first two Gatto Black EPs, I remember wanting to say it, wanting to be honest about it, wanting to write songs about this stuff, but I just wasn't ready yet, you know?

1120: Why did you think now was the right time then to finally confront all this so openly?

SM: It just felt like if I'm gonna go down to New Jersey and make an album and fulfill this lifelong dream I've always had of going into and living in a studio for 10 days, then I better make the best damn record I could possibly make. And I just kind of hit a point as a songwriter and as an artist where I was, like, I can't make the best art if I'm not being honest and not fully telling the truth.

1120: It's such an intensely personal album. For instance, the song ‘Panic Bedroom 2005,’ we almost feel guilty listening to it. It's so visceral and not only emotionally heavy, but emotionally bare. It's really ballsy the way you lay yourself so bare.

SM: Thank you. Honestly, that was one of those songs, like I mentioned earlier, where I just sort of said ‘the thing’ and it became the lyric. I was trying to figure out the chorus, for instance, and then I just did a take where I said, ‘I guess I make art so I don't kill myself.’ I'm getting chills just thinking about it, but I was like, ‘Can I actually say that?’

1120: Staying on the topic of your lyrics on this record, on the song ‘Soon You'll Be Forgiven,’ there’s a part where there’s a voice, speaking, saying over and over again: ‘Soon You’ll Be Forgiven.’ Is that your conscience? Is that God? Who is it talking to you?

SM: That's a great question. I think that's me talking to myself. That was actually the first song that I wrote for the album. I wanted that to be on the previous Gatto EP, ‘Not Ready to Die,’ which was probably around the time that I really started coming out to people. The thought was, ‘I hope I can be forgiven for this.’ I didn't know how my wife was going to take it. I was just scared, you know? So, I think that was me talking to me and just kind of being like, ‘Yeah, God's not gonna forgive me. I don't even know if my family members are going to forgive me after I break this news. I hope I can forgive myself.’

1120: That's a really fucking heavy concept because really, when you think about it, why are you asking for forgiveness? Forgiveness for what? Obviously, we understand where you're coming from. We grew up in the church and know exactly what you are saying. But strip all that bullshit away; you did nothing wrong. It’s fucked up how society and religion can make you feel guilty for something which you really should not feel any guilt for whatsoever.

SM: I spent a lot of years just fucking hating myself and thinking I was just a total piece of shit and that gets internalized into you through religion, through our culture. There's still part of me that feels like guilty for ... well … maybe it's for not being who I am, I'm proud of who I am, and I feel comfortable that at this point. But you know, I was masking it and hiding myself for all those years.

1120: This is a very personal question so if you’re not comfortable with it, please pass. But there's a line in the song ‘Panic Bedroom…’ that talks about your mother being dead. You grew up without your biological mother. When we heard that line, and knowing the subject matter and the theme of the album, we couldn’t help but wonder whether things would have been different for you in navigating your struggle had your mother been around?

SM: Yeah, I mean, that's something I thought about all the time, honestly. My uncle, who is one of my closest family members, is gay. He’s my mom's brother. And they were super close growing up. He would always say that she was his best friend and the person he came out to. My father remarried and there was always a lot of comments from my parents regarding suspicions about my sexuality, or comments about gay people in our family. Those were things that pushed me in deeper.

I wrote this song that I never released for one of my old bands where I had a line and it was like, ‘you and I would have been such great friends if maybe I had a different haircut,’ or something like that. And I remember that was a coded thing meaning, ‘well, if my mom was alive who the fuck knows who I'd be? Maybe I would be out.’ I really kind of went down a lot of weird paths with that. I appreciate you asking these questions, honestly, because I'm realizing I haven't even really processed a lot of it.

1120: ‘Soon You’ll Be Forgiven’ was the first song you wrote for the album, but in listening to the record and where it's positioned on the track list, it almost seems like a major turning point in the narrative of the album. Like, it’s the point where it seems like you hit a point of acceptance.

SM: That's totally right. That was super intentional, actually, for the physical album. That will be the last song on side A on the vinyl. The first four songs contain some of the darker lyrical stuff. Then the album, I think, tries to progress a little bit right after ‘Soon You'll Be Forgiven.’ There are still some peaks and valleys, but it is like a turning point. I think that's what I felt: Moving into acceptance and deciding that maybe I can save myself or something. 

1120: Despite the heaviness of the album, its title is really positive. It's gotta have a meaning, right?

SM: It definitely does. Driving down to Jersey with Mike, he asked ‘what's the album called?’ And I said, ‘Sky is Blue.’ I didn't even really know why at that point. There's a lot of references to the sky and ‘blue sky’ on the album. A lot of it has to do with my mom, actually.

There was a long time in my life where I just really kind of let myself slip into abandon and just felt totally alone. I felt like I was either going to take this thing with my sexuality to the grave or leave this planet to free myself. I don't know if I’ve really ever believed in heaven. But I was raised in the Catholic Church, and the sky is where heaven is, right? It's where God is. It's where you might look when you're on your knees praying out your window. The older I got, and the more I realized I was gay, I began to reject God. My mom died from an aneurysm. I was still inside her. She was seven months pregnant with me. It happened in an instant.

When I would sit down to pray, I remember just talking to her and I could feel like some sort of connection, like she was looking out for me. And I remember playing Little League baseball. I would be stuck in right field, and I would stand there just looking at the blue sky and thinking, ‘My mom is up there. Can she hear me? Can she see me?’  

1120: Gatto Black has always seemed more than a band. It’s like you’ve created this alter ego, or some sort of secret world. The songwriting, the music, the alter ego: it's always seemed intricate and sophisticated. How would you describe Gatto Black?

SM: Yeah, the alter ego thing is kind of funny that you clocked in on that because I think I was trying to be subversive with it from the jump. I've always been very into punk and hardcore. But at the same time, I think something that always turned me off about hardcore is the hyper-masculine nature of it and aggression. And that's not to say that there's anything wrong with it. I think all that stuff is so essential and is the thrust of this music in so many ways. But I don't feel like that's me. That's not who I am. That’s not my personality. So, I was like, if I'm gonna do a hardcore project, it has to be a little tongue-in-cheek. Like, I named it after a fucking cat, you know?

So, it started very much as wanting to be subversive, but I think also that was a way for me to hide again. It was like, ‘well, I don't feel comfortable expressing aggression because the only person that I'm really mad at is myself.’ On this album, I feel like I was able to kind of make peace with that and get a little more aggressive and lean into some of the more aggressive stuff I like about hardcore. I realized there was a way I can tell the truth but do it in a way that's really true to me.

1120: In making this album — especially after struggling all this time to write so honestly about your sexuality — is there anything you've learned about yourself that maybe you didn't know?

SM: Yeah, there is. I think I realized in writing a lot of these lyrics just how much pain I

inflicted upon myself. Like, obviously, there’s the villains on the album like the church. But not every song is about the church. I'm the villain in a lot of cases. And I don't think that's necessarily my own fault. I was a kid. I was hiding. I didn't know the dangers of wearing the mask, you know? But I think, like, having kind of written all these songs and processing it, it's allowed me to heal in a lot of ways.

It's funny; I had these great hopes that when I finally came out, I would be totally healed. I mean, it's definitely opened up a lot of my mental capacity not having to worry about how I'm being perceived. So that's been really nice. But I still have all my stupid things that I do and my stupid weird insecurities and all that shit. I had high hopes I was just gonna wipe the slate clean and be a new person. Still, in a lot of ways, I feel so much better. I can't even tell you just how good it feels just to be able to have a conversation with you about this. It truly like means a lot.

1120: So then going back to ‘Soon You'll be Forgiven.’ It's not about other people forgiving you. Maybe it's you forgiving yourself.

SM: I think so. And I kind of intentionally left the lyric open-ended. There's a lyric that says, ‘No it won't be God.’ In the original demo, I did say the only person that can forgive yourself is you. But ultimately, I was like, ‘I'm just gonna leave that open.’

1120: So, have you finally forgiven yourself?

SM: I think so, yeah… Yeah, I think I have.