Metal Music Interviews

Interview Interrogation: Patricia Pons from SynlakrosS (Spain)

10/6/2016

Spanish Modern Melodic Death Metal outfit SynlakrosS have been rampaging around the block since 2008 and since then have released one demo and two albums, the second "Death Bullets For A Forajido" dropped back in May. With their sharp rise in the Spanish Metal scene and the line-up only changing the one time, things are looking bright for this hot property.

Check out their music video "Curly Wolves" below.

We aimed to keep the band cornered but as they ran and hid, the band's front-woman Patricia Pons was more than happy to seek the members up and bind them together, whilst she directed her answers to our questions.

Patricia Pons, not exactly your modern Calamity Jane

"(In Spain) if you want promotion, in general, you have to pay, no matter how amazing and well done is your music"

Could you give us the background by your new music video 'Curly Wolves'? What does it mean, who recorded it, etc.

          "‘Curly Wolf’ means a tough objectionable character, a real tough guy. So, we made 'Curly Wolves' as a hymn, a statement of intent: ‘Destroy what destroys you’. It's that simple, without concessions, regardless of whether the problem is society or you. Destroy everything, be a tough guy, a 'Curly Wolf', willing to face up, ruthless and rebellious. But you are not alone, together we can do it. That is the essence. The video was directed and produced by Henry Menacho (Kronic Productions) in Barcelona"

You've just released your second album 'Death Bullets for a Forajido', what is different on this album in contrast to your debut? Will there be a UK / EU tour supporting the album?

          "There are a lot of differences, our sound is better, it is more mature of course, and was produced by Facundo Novo (Novo Estudios). We worked hard on this album, we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do on this album, and we learned a lot about the process and mistakes of the debut album. Yes, we want to tour around the UK and EU with this album, but we haven’t got anything sorted yet. Are there any promoters reading this? (LOL)"

Relating to the previous question, there is a 'Wild West' theme going on through the album, how did you decide on this theme? Will we expect another album with a similar theme? Would you agree that SynlakrosS might be one of the first bands to sing about said theme?

          "Well, it was a joke at first, to do a Wild West album, but after a few weeks the joke turned into a great idea. I started to investigate about the Wild West, it was an amazing experience and a huge inspiration, and my mates were happy to do this kind of album. And yes, SynlakrosS might be one of the first bands to sing about this theme. Now, we are working on the next album and the thematic is very, very different."

What could you tell us about the Valencian Metal scene? Is it popular? Do people from Valencia prefer to be referred to as 'Valencian' rather than Spanish? (in relation to the ongoing Basque Country and Catalonia debate).

          "We have great bands here, but it isn’t a popular scene in my opinion. The bands and metalheads here aren’t united, so it’s a difficult situation for bands like us who want to be professional, and there is far too much ego and bad competitions between bands, that's what I see, and I don’t understand it… there are a couple of clubs for metal bands, and gigs and little festivals are made by the local bands in general. There are people who prefer ‘Valencian’, but in general I think people are OK with the term Spanish. I prefer Spanish if I have to choose."

What makes your style of Melodic Death Metal unique and how would you describe your sound without genre-tagging? What styles of metal does each member bring into the band?

          "We have different influences inside and out of metal music and this is reflected in our Melodic Death Metal music. We describe our sound like as 'Passionate Metal', we say ‘Killer Metal Music’ (killer, very cool) because we love what we do."

Would you agree that Spanish Metal is slightly underrated and that there should be more attention paid to the scene? Are there any media(s) covering metal music in Spain?

          "Yes, it is, but the only thing that we can do now to change this is to work hard creating great music and touring around the world until the situation changes. And first of all, understand the importance of learning English. In Spain it is our pending subject.

          Of course we have media, magazines, radios, etc,. But big magazines and radios only talk about international big bands, or national big old bands, if you want promotion, in general, you have to pay, no matter how amazing and well done is your music. Sad, but true."

Individually what hobbies and interests do you have outside of your main job and music? Do any of these interests / hobbies have some inspiration towards your music?

          "Of course, they are a great inspiration. We love manga, anime, video-games, books… and we use this inspiration on lyrics and music."

What plans have you got for the rest of 2016? With the EU referendum in the UK drawing close, are you worried even by the slightest what challenges might arise after the referendum?

          "No we aren't worried, music is like water, it finds the way to get in through small holes. So, our plans are to work hard and tour with the new album as much as possible."

Finally have you got any hello's or thank you's that you wish to send out?

          "Yes!! Thank you very much for all our fans and friends from UK. Thanks for your love, support, and bought our new album and merch. You are the best!! We can’t wait to play there and be with you. Big hug!!"

"Death Bullets For A Forajido" is out now via an Independent Release

https://www.facebook.com/Synlakross
http://www.synlakross.com/

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Interview Interrogation: Armi Päivinen from Ravenia (Finland)

9/6/2016

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It's conceivable that the Finnish people are metal-music crazy, with a hole host of bands making names for themselves and achieving mainstream success. From Children of Bodom to Nightwish and HIM to Lordi (who won Eurovision 2006) and Apocalyptica who still to this day remain as the sole Cello Metal band. But gnawing at the latter's heels is the nonet Ravenia of whose self-styled Symphonic Metal sound takes on an epic dramatic twist, with the symphonies being engulfed by film-score/operatic elements that leave the listener entranced by this sensational outfit.

Having released their debut album "Beyond the Walls of Death" back at the end of April, it was about time GMA locked the group away in a Lapland cabin, waited till dark and under the night sky watched the Northern lights dance away whilst we interrogated Armi Päivinen, Ravenia's vocalist. It begins with the background story of Ravenia's past...

"I don't think that metal music is very well represented in the the history of soundtracks but maybe we can fix that"

"Back in 2013 Samuli Reinikainen asked me to sing on a couple of his songs, so I wrote the vocal arrangements and lyrics for them. The vocals had already been recorded when he decided that he no longer wanted to work with me. Well, we figured why waste the vocals when they were already recorded, so we decided to compose new songs around them. Hence Ravenia was born. After that we started composing music for our full-length. Samuli knew our other violinist, Ville, so we asked him if he wanted to be a part of the album, he also recruited the other guys.

We previously worked with Veikko in the group In Silentio Noctis, so we really wanted him to be a part of this as well, he was an obvious choice for us. Samuli has also played together with our bassist Toni Hintikka, so he asked him to tag along, we felt that his style would fit our album perfectly. After we finished recording in the summer of 2015, the album was then mixed at Sonic Pump Studios and mastered at Chartmakers. Finally, our debut ”Beyond The Walls of Death” was released April 29th via Inner Wound Recordings."

Ravenia is called a 'Epic Film score Metal' band, what is inspiration behind this and do you hope it will enable you to create your own genre?

"Who knows, it would certainly be cool. We really love film score / trailer music and we really wanted to get a chance to do that ourselves. Since metal has always been the thing closest to our hearts, we didn't really want to stray too far from it, so we figured why not combine the two. The trailer music elements are definitely our main focus, so the guitars and drums are there really to support that theme and not the other way around."

Because of your distinct sound, could you see Ravenia writing the score for a film? What upcoming film(s) would you love to pen the score for? Do you feel that metal music is not well represented in film soundtracks?

"We could definitely see ourselves writing a score to a fantasy or a war film. It would have been fun to be involved in writing the music for the Assasin's Creed movie but since it's already coming out in December, it's a little late for that. I don't think that metal music is very well represented in the the history of soundtracks but maybe we can fix that, hahhah!"

As Ravenia is a nonet (nine-piece), is it hard to maintain stability and write music together? What challenges has the band faced?

"Since Samuli and I write all the songs together, it makes it a lot easier than having nine people all pitching in with their ideas. We've had quite a few challenges, of course budget wise and more than our fair share of difficulties with the studio computer not working because of the massive amount of tracks. Sometimes we are forced to do things really slowly and it's wasting a lot of valuable time, so we certainly hope that once we start making our next album we would have been able to fix that issue."

Armi Päivinen, defining 'Film-Score Metal'

Your debut album 'Beyond The Walls Of Death' is now out, what has the response been so far? Do your plan to tour the UK / Europe in support of the album?

"So far the response from most people has been absolutely incredible, it's truly wonderful to see that the emotion is coming through in our music. I have never really heard such beautiful things that
some of our listeners have said, it is very touching. We don't have any touring plans at the moment because of the size of our group, also we have quite a large amount of backing tracks, so unfortunately the venue needs to be quite large in order for those things to work well in a live setting. We have kind of dug a little grave for ourselves with that."

Could you give us a brief breakdown as to what each song means, which was the easiest and hardest to record and what one is your favourite?

"Here it goes, I'll do my best to break them down..

”For Those We Forsakened” is about everything going wrong, feeling like giving up and there's really no one you can lean on. Finally ending up losing everything because you didn't really have any strength to fix things alone.

”Into Oblivion” is a song basically about suicide and giving into the darkness, it's sort of a continuation to ”For Those We Forsaken”.

”We All Died For Honor” tells the story of those who were left behind when their loved has passed at war.

”There Is But One Path” is about you letting go of a loved one.

”In Silence” is about crossing to the other side really. I wouldn't call it a very positive description of that though.

”When Darkness Rings” is actually a ghost story, being possessed by a spirit.

”The Fallen” is about not forgetting who you are and what you were meant to be even though it seems like all hope is gone.

”We Stand As One” I would call almost an end of the world song, fighting to survive but standing united even when it all comes to an end.

Hmm, the hardest one to record for me was probably ”In Silence”, I don't know why, it just took the longest. The easiest one for me, I would say was ”For Those We Forsaken”. It's hard to name a favourite, parents love all their children equally but ”Into Oblivion” has always been close to my heart musically, it really has the best of both worlds I think."

Your music video 'We All Died For Honor', what is it about? Is it about the Lapland War against the Soviet Union in WW2? Or something else?

"We didn't want it to be about a specific war, so it's more of a general description. The point of the video is not so much on the war itself as it is in those that were left behind to mourn. We wanted that to be the main focus."

Barack Obama acknowledged Finland's long history of successfully exporting metal music at the Nordic summit, what is it do you think that makes Finnish Metal music so popular? With Lordi's Eurovision win arguably being the most outstanding achievement for any Finnish musician, let alone metal, would Ravenia contemplate putting themselves forward to represent Finland at any forthcoming edition of the ESC?

"For some reason, you are not the first person to ask us that. Lately quite a few people have been
asking the same thing. We can't really see ourselves participating in the contest at this point but who knows what crazy plans we'll come up with in the future! It's kinda hard to say what makes Finnish metal so popular but it might have something to do with that that it's cold and dark almost all year long and what else is there to do in Finland besides making music?"

Finally have you got any hello's, thank you's, greetings you wish to send out?

"First of all thank you for the interview and to all our listeners a huge thank you for all the kind words and support. Stay epic."

Ravenia's debut album "Beyond The Walls Of Death" is out via Inner Would Recordings

https://www.facebook.com/raveniaofficial
http://www.raveniaofficial.com/

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Interview Interrogation: Izzy from Conquer Divide (USA)

9/6/2016

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Being a female metal or rock musician over the course of history has always dragged up challenges and problems that otherwise might not be experienced by their male counterparts. Firstly the immoral and unforgiving stigma directed towards said musicians has always proved an issue, but it's one that has been been challenged head on through arguably a whole plethora of successful artists and bands.

From the likes of Siousxie & The Banshees to Annie Lennox, from Sabina Classen and Orianthi to Vanilla Ninja and arguably the most prolific all-female metal band, Girlschool. These are musicians who stood up to the male-dominated arena of rock and metal, stuck the middle finger up and alluded to the notion of 'who said girls can't rock or mosh?' As AC/DC once put it, 'for those about to rock, we salute you' and for the female rock / metal musicians and subsequent all-female bands, we do exactly that, we salute you. One of these bands is Conquer Divide, who are rampaging and setting the USA on fire with their own unrelenting and uncompromising style of Alternative Post-Hardcore / Metalcore.

Let's be honest, it does not matter who or what you are, as long as you are happy playing music then those who remark on it can stick their opinion where it should belong. As Tamara quite rightly put it when speaking to Blabbermouth, "We are all girls, and you cant hide that, but we want people to focus more on the quality of the music," (http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/all-female-metal-band-conquer-divide-to-release-debut-album-in-july/), so with that in mind we asked our own questions and Izzy (guitarist) duly decided to respond to them.

Will the ongoing debate about female musicians disappear or has it already seen the end? What about the youth of today, could Conquer Divide offer themselves as inspiration for female musicians (whatever style of music) to aspire to? Izzy believes they can (we do too):-

          "No, I don't think it's something that will fade away easily. I mean its pretty common for our musicality to be undermined because we are girls, that's the sad reality. On the flip side being an "all girl band" in a male dominated industry has given us an edge to create something different and stand out from the crowd. We definitely want to have a positive impact on young girls and show them that there is always room for girls in metal, you just have to dedicate yourself to do it!"

It would seem logical that giving girls instruments would open doors for newer creativity and ideas, just like the Japanese Metal scene has recently experienced with the phenomenal yet completely unforeseeable rise of Babymetal; well they did go completely viral in a very short space of time, truth be told not many people knew of their existence outside of Japan. Here's hoping that more and more females worldwide grab hold of an instrument or harness some sort of musical skill and form a band, or at least join one. So what about their heritage? Well they do have members originally from the USA, the UK and Serbia and so did this work out for them? Well clearly it did!

          "The concept for Conquer Divide was originally formed in Michigan, USA. However to complete the line up the band had to outsource to different areas. It's hard enough finding dedicated musicians to create bands, and when you're specifically trying to find female musicians that's even harder, so that's why naturally we are from different areas. We write music with each other via the internet! Yay technology!"

With their debut self-titled album already out, surely the chances of a tour to support it's release seemed likely, well actually this is not the case. See, Conquer Divide have done the opposite and toured prior to the album release in support of it as Izzy goes on to explain (as well as speaking about current endeavours):-

          "We released our album last summer whilst we were on the 2015 All Stars tour, so I guess that was our album release tour! We just came off tour with Slaves, Capture The Crown, Myka Relocate, Outline In Color and currently we have no tours coming up. We are busy doing some writing but we would love to hit the road again soon!"

"Conquer Divide" track-list

01. Sink Your Teeth Into This
02. Self Destruct
03. Eyes Wide Shut
04. Nightmares
05. Lost
06. What's Left Inside
07. At War
08. Despicable You
09. Heavy Lies The Crown
10. Broken

With the band essentially coming fresh off the block on the international stage, we asked Izzy if she could describe the album's sound without the ill-fated genre tagging, what track(s) are her favourites and why. Most musicians have a stand-out track and usually these take the form of a single or music video as a way to showcase the track(s) they're most proud of. Logically speaking differentiating your song styles offers you greater choice at electing a song you like the most, moreover it allows a plethora of fans from different style preferences to come to like the release in question. However Izzy offered some unique advice when it comes to their album, "We just would advise fans to listen to the album from start to finish to really get a taste of what we are about." before adding:-

"Our album is pretty varied, we have heavy songs like "Heavy Lies The Crown" and "Despicable You" which are more screaming / guitar orientated and then lighter songs like "Broken" and "What's Left Inside" which really focus on Kia's singing abilities. I honestly like all the songs on our album (I know I know, a cop out answer) but for different reasons, for example "Heavy Lies The Crown" has awesome riffs, which for me being a guitarist is fun, "Nightmares" has some sweet synth sections in it."

Creating music as a musician or band, or working in the music industry in one of many outlets such as PR or record labels, show promoters or engineers etc., can be a strenuous job sometimes and as a result it can take toll on your body to the extent you just want out, so to avoid this dilemma musicians often indulge in other interests and or hobbies to take a break from said profession(s). So what does Izzy like to do?

"We all have different hobbies which is pretty cool, I know Kristen really likes travelling because on tour we don't really get to "see" a lot. I still like jamming guitar outside of tour, I'm pretty into working out and I like snowboarding!

And obviously by travelling you are able to take your music with you and not just on tour. Naturally with the internet lending itself as a major driving force for globalization, bands are finding that their music is being picked up in the unlikeliest and remotest parts of the world unbeknownst to them. Even for GMA as a media outlet we see people from the likes of Greenland to French Polynesia take note in what we do, so we have to thank the internet for that. But what of Conquer Divide? Has Social Media aided them well, and what does Izzy think of it's darker side?

"We seem to have a lot of fans in South America which is pretty sweet, our album actually debuted in Japan as well and people seem to dig our music there too! We are actually hoping to tour Japan soon so that's super exciting. I feel social media has been nothing but positive for bands, but modern technology kind of killed CD sales which makes it harder to make a living from music... but as a musician you just have to go with the flow and constantly adapt to the changes."

And with changes in mind, could we see Conquer Divide's debut album take on the form of being released in vinyl format as it's unprecedented resurgence continues to grip tighter on music consumerism?

"We have talked about it yes, but we haven't got any solid plans for it because we are unsure how much demand we have for vinyl..... so if anyone is reading this and wants our album on vinyl let us know!!!"

So what plans alongside the potential for their self-titled debut album being released on vinyl is there and what greetings does Izzy want to send out?

"More tours (hopefully outside of the USA), writing an acoustic EP and getting stuck into writing our second album! I think I can speak for all the girls when I say we want to thank our team at Artery, our supportive family and friends and of course our awesome fans who inspire, motivate and have created a platform for us to live our dreams on."

Check out their lyric video for 'At War' by clicking the inserted video above this text.

Conquer Divide's self-titled debut album is out via Artery Recordings

https://www.facebook.com/ConquerDivideUSA

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Interview Interrogation: Patricia Pons from SynlakrosS (Spain)

"(In Spain) if you want promotion, in general, you have to pay, no matter how amazing and well done is your music"

Interview Interrogation: Armi Päivinen from Ravenia (Finland)

"I don't think that metal music is very well represented in the the history of soundtracks but maybe we can fix that"

Interview Interrogation: Izzy from Conquer Divide (USA)

© 2011-2022
Global Metal Apocalypse

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Interview Interrogation: Patricia Pons from SynlakrosS (Spain)

"(In Spain) if you want promotion, in general, you have to pay, no matter how amazing and well done is your music"

Interview Interrogation: Armi Päivinen from Ravenia (Finland)

"I don't think that metal music is very well represented in the the history of soundtracks but maybe we can fix that"

Interview Interrogation: Izzy from Conquer Divide (USA)

© 2011-2022Global Metal Apocalypse

Archives

Categories

© 2011-2022
Global Metal Apocalypse