Heavy-metal hymns

Sydney, Australia - An hour before his first Sydney show, Davide Bruno, the rather fierce-looking leader of the Italian heavy-metal group Metatrone, was holed up in his dressing room and refusing to speak.

"I'm sorry," said the band's manager. "Davide has not yet finished his prayers. He will talk to you in five minutes."

Metatrone, it should be pointed out, are a Catholic heavy-metal group. In Sydney to perform at World Youth Day, they have turned an eardrum-shredding genre often associated with Satanism, bat-chewing and general debauchery into … well, what exactly?

"For us it's just music: rhythms, energy, melodies, chords, vocals," said Bruno, who sports a goatee and shares Ozzy Osbourne's dress sense - black shirt, crucifix - but not his lifestyle.

Bruno admits to enjoying the occasional glass of wine, but talk of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll elicits hearty laughter.

"We don't have those stereotypes," he said.

No groupies, then? No trashed hotel rooms?

"Ha-ha! After a concert, all we need is a shower, lots of water, fruit if possible and a warm bed. The most important thing is not that we play heavy metal, but that we are friends. We are growing all the time as friends and music is the way we are friends."

Bruno formed Metatrone in 1998, but the band's "lyrics and purpose" changed radically in 2001 when he entered a seminary in Catania, Sicily, to study for the priesthood. He has not yet completed his studies, but may do so next year.

The priests at the seminary enjoyed the band's music so much they agreed to finance its debut album, The Powerful Hand.

Bruno describes this as "a normal and natural evolution of the project".

"I was a 'metaler' before I entered the seminary and I continued to be a metaler after I entered the seminary," he said.

Still, not every metaler writes lyrics such as "My heart is here in God it lays/ I'm just like 'Oh, please don't run away' ". And honestly, when was the last time you heard a version of Ave Maria by a heavy-metal group?