Q: Your records are incredibly cohesive throughout, with plenty of motifs and well-thought-out track flow. How do you balance “writing for the song” versus “writing for the album”?

Duran: The composition of the album always starts with a couple of riffs. Once we have a first song structure, we try to clarify the vision we have for the album as a whole. Will it be a single block? Will all the tracks flow into one another? Will it be a “Side A / Side B” format? Will it be a collection of singles? We always aim to explore something we haven’t done yet. Then, we look at the songs themselves. Each track has to stand on its own. We don’t want to have fillers on the album. Once we have the songs, we have to choose an order that works as well. We want to provide contrast and keep the listening experience interesting enough. Sometimes this contrast comes in the tonality of the songs, sometimes in the varying intensities, time signatures, and different layers.
Johan: The most interesting and crucial part for me is turning a collection of riffs into a fully formed song. Writing variations, progressions, and transitions, shaping the structure and musical narrative of each track, it can be pure chaos. It can drive you insane! It often feels like I’m searching for a missing piece of a giant puzzle, and the process can take months. It’s as much intellectual work as it is heartfelt expression. And personally, I love that! Also figuring out the connections between songs, whether it’s a rhythmic or melodic motif, a tempo, etc, it’s very fun. You realise that everything is linked somehow.

Q: For nearly a decade, Stortregn were a melodic black metal band heavily inspired by Dissection! What happened to spur the transition into the melodic blackened proggy tech death band you are now? Was it a natural evolution? Do you see the band drastically evolving again, or do you plan on tinkering with the current style for longer?

Johan: Dissection was one of the first extreme metal bands I listened to when I was younger. I was deeply moved and impressed by the emotional power of their first two albums. That impact led me to co-found the band, in an attempt to reach that same emotional intensity. In hindsight, that era felt like a great learning experience for me. Anyway, we quickly wanted to move away from being seen as a “tribute” band because we felt we had so much more to offer, and we were tired of being boxed into that label. The arrival of Duran, and later Manu, also significantly broadened our musical horizons, since they come from different backgrounds and have diverse musical aspirations. Nowadays, we’re pushing our own limits, and we don’t know where that might take us!
Duran: Believe it or not, I had never listened to Dissection before I joined the band! I can’t claim to have been influenced by them. But we continue to evolve as musicians and have different musical backgrounds, so I think it is safe to say that our style is not set in stone. You might hear bluegrass influences in the future. Who knows?

Q: Franck, you’re a new face in the band, welcome! What has touring with the band been like? In person, you mentioned that Stortregn’s extensive use of high screams was a new hurdle in your vocal career. Were there any adjustments you made to your technique?

Franck: Thanks for the welcome! Lots of things to say. Actually I never toured before and I thought touring would remain a boy’s dream. But it finally happened. So touring as the vocalist of Stortregn, a band I’ve been a fan of for years, opening for Virvum, whose album I’ve listened to so many times, was a unique experience in my life as you can imagine. I was really nervous about being up to the task, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to meet Stortregn’s live performances level. But I felt very well with the two bands, I could express how I felt anytime and they all helped me to relax and have a lot of fun. And I was surprised that my voice held on for the 12 shows!
As for the technique, in my previous and other bands I am more used to use the low voice as the main vocals. So for Stortregn, I had to switch in my head to make the high screams as the main vocals, and to use them as high as I could. It was a challenge because the high screams of the previous singer had this strength that, for me, was so characteristic of Stortregn’s sound. It sounds more black metal than what I have done with my other bands. So I had to train myself a lot to reach a balance between keeping the sound of the band and bringing something new with my voice. The composition and recording of the One Eternal EP really helped me in that way, and the advice and feedback of the members of the band were precious.

Q: Samuel, I know you have a background in jazz drumming, and that’s clear in your playing which is some of the most creative and original I’ve ever heard in metal. Who are some of your major influences, metal or otherwise? 

Samuel: Thanks for this question and the kind words. I definitely love some bands from both music styles metal and jazz, bands like Gorod, Leprous, Opeth, The Bad Plus, and also Jazz pianists like Hiromi, Brad Mehldau, or Tigran Hamasyan. If we talk about drummers, guys like Elvin Jones, Max Roach, Jimmy Cobb, Tony Williams, Bill Stewart, Nate Smith, Stéphane Galland, and in metal music Sebastian Lanser, Baard Kolstad and Kai Hahto. I took some drum lessons with them and they’re part of my musical journey.

Q: Johan and Duran, you three have such complex, interweaving guitar/bass lines and dueling solos that it begs the question: how do you decide who plays which part? Also, do you two have any classical training? Your sound demonstrates a seeming mastery of counterpoint.

Johan: Thanks for the compliment! I’m a professional classical guitarist–I did all my studies in Switzerland and won several competitions back in the day. I’m very active in the classical world, performing recitals internationally and playing as a soloist with orchestras. My classical studies drastically changed the way I approach writing for the band, especially from Emptiness Fills the Void onwards, and that influence continues to shape our sound today.
Duran: I think there are so many possibilities with our formation and we don’t want to limit ourselves to pigeonhole our roles. We have Johan’s classical background which brings the sharpness and the strong compositional cohesion and music theory. Then, Manu and I could switch from guitar to bass / bass to guitar at any time. So sometimes Manu plays the bass like a guitarist and I will play guitar like a bassist, if that makes any sense. We want to take on more than just the traditional double lead-rhythm-bass combo. I think this contributes to and expands our sound. It’s all in the optic of getting the right sound for the right part. Then for the decision of who plays what line, it will depend on the vision of the main composer of the song.

Q: Of course, you are a band from Francophone Switzerland, yet you write lyrics in English except for a few on Impermanence and Finitude. Have you considered writing more songs in French?

Duran: “Nénie” was the first song that we recorded in French, although there might be some obscure early demos somewhere with French lyrics, but I can’t confirm that. Then, in Finitude, we have the title track and “De Inferno Solis” which are  in French as well. Once again, it depends on the vibe of the writer. Romain had very interesting lyrics in French and he delivered them brutally and it worked seamlessly on the track. Why should we limit ourselves to English if we can push an idea in a more personal manner? Then again, it has to sound good with the track. I’m hoping one day to get a track out in Finnish, but it has to be justified with the theme of the song or the story. We’ll see how that will turn out.
Johan: French language and pronunciation adds a lot to the music! It’s so much more brutal and crisp. English, on the other hand, tends to sound more polished and ’round’. It’s cool to be able to use them both to serve your musical purpose.

Q: Do you typically do songwriting sessions in person together? Few bands seem to have as much synergy as you in the studio—and live as I was lucky enough to see. Every piece clicks into place.

Duran: Thanks for the compliment. We just started trying to schedule songwriting sessions, but with each of our timetables it’s almost impossible to find a time and place that works for everyone. Otherwise until now, it was very much Guitar Pro based, tabbing out our ideas, uploading them on a shared cloud drive, modifying others’ ideas, hating other people’s edits and trying to find a compromise somewhere. We’ve had a couple of heated discussions. You can sometimes hear the tension in the compositions but the end result has always justified them. 
Johan: In my experience, in-person writing sessions have never really worked for us. Personally, I need to sit down alone, like a craftsman in his workshop who carefully refines and polishes the material.

Q: With the sad news of Ozzy’s death, Stortregn’s new cover of “Mr. Crowley” hits all the harder. What made you pick that song to cover from his discography? Have you considered covering other artists/songs? It always seems like a great way to give tribute to your influence, and it sounds like you guys had a blast performing the Ozzy cover.

Duran: On a personal level, I am extremely sad that Ozzy has passed on. I mean it was bound to happen, but nobody expected it to happen so suddenly. His music has been so influential and has had such an impact on so many different artists and I am no exception. May his music live on forever and may he rest in peace.
On the subject of our cover, we have been discussing a potential cover of “Mr. Crowley” for years. It fits everything: it’s a dark song, a classic, it has epic riffs and solos, an amazing story behind the whole original album, and it has enough space for us to interpret it in our way. We are very happy with the result and can only hope that Ozzy had the chance to give it a listen and approve it!
There might have been other covers in discussion. Nothing recorded, though….yet!

Q: Do any of you have any personal favorite Stortregn songs/albums?

Duran: The next album is my favorite! I can’t wait to finish the writing process to get it recorded and release it! 
Franck : My personal favorite song to play live is “Through the Dark Gates,” especially at the end of the set–it’s just insane. Now, among songs we didn’t play during the last tour, I always tell the guys I really love “Cold Void” from Finitude. I also love “Timeless Splendor,” “Children of the Obsidian Light,” or “Inner Black Flame.” But still, the next album will obviously be the best.
Johan : The next one, indeed!

Q: If you could tour with any band, who would it be?

Johan : Bands that are on the same wavelength as us, but also know how to party!
Duran: It’s a tough question. We just completed our Canada Takeover tour with Virvum which was an absolute blast. I would tour with them again any day!

Q: What bands were most influential in getting you all into music—and as listeners, how has your taste progressed over the years? 

Duran: The scene has never been as big and varied as it is today. So I can always find something new that scratches an itch I never knew I had! My biggest influences would be Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath (Ozzy / Dio / Tony Martin), B.B. King, Pantera, Dream Theater, Slayer, early-In Flames, and so on.
Johan : I’m still returning to my old classics sometimes, but the latest Dordeduh and Sühnopfer were amazing. 

Q: Any favorite albums of 2025 so far, or any local or underground bands you want to shout out?

Duran: I have a huge backlog of albums I have to listen to. I think I still have to finish 2019. But shout out to our good friends: Virvum, Burn Down Eden, Conjonctive, Calcined, The Scalar Process, and Skaphos!

Thank you again to Stortregn for the interview and make sure to check out their new EP One Eternal on Bandcamp and wherever else good music is streamable!

Links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives Page

The post Interview: Stortregn appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Festival co-promoter Milton Mendonça, who’s currently in charge of Day 2 at the festival, sat down with Claire to chat about ProgPower USA, its legacy, and the challenges of bringing international bands to the United States in 2025.

Hi Milton, thanks for joining us in the underground tunnels of the Progressive Subway for this interview. To start off, in your own words, what is ProgPower USA?

ProgPower USA is a metal festival that takes place once a year in Atlanta here in the USA. It’s something that’s been near and dear to me since 2002. I started attending as a fan back then, and it is probably single-handedly the one event that has kickstarted those two particular genres of music, progressive and power metal, to become more popular and more accessible here in the States. It’s given some artists the first chance to come and play in the States, and now some of these artists come back and tour year after year. It’s a pretty special event.

You mentioned that you started attending the festival as a fan. How did you get involved in your current capacity as a co-promoter?

After 10 years of going as an attendee, I was invited to join the crew. I started working as a music journalist, from that I went into PR, and then I went into booking and management. Through booking some of the bands at ProgPower, I had already established a good relationship with [festival founder and current lead promoter] Glenn Harveston and he said, “Hey, we’re looking for somebody to do the Wednesday show, if you want to take a stab at it.” And I came on board as the Wednesday night promoter, and things progressed, and now I’m the heir apparent as Glenn gets ready to move into retirement.

Looking at the almost 25-year history of the festival, and its legacy up until this point, could you share some of the bands that hadn’t previously toured in the US, that you’re the most proud of having brought to ProgPower?

I can’t speak for the years that I wasn’t a promoter; that’s Glenn’s credit and he deserves all of it. But there’s definitely been some bands that I didn’t think I would ever be able to get in the States at all. Some bands that I was a fan of and never had a chance to work with up until then. The Blind Guardian special set was a pretty solid one. I was always a big fan of Stream of Passion, and I never thought they would come to the States, and we pulled that off. Galneryus was a big deal, bringing them from Japan. And I got to work as a promoter for one of my favorite bands, Angra.

I came with my little cheat sheet of some of the bands that I know are really beloved at the Progressive Subway, that had US debuts or one-off appearances at the festival. Nightwish, Blind Guardian, Green Carnation, Vanden Plas, Seventh Wonder, Orphaned Land, Angra. A lot of really great bands.

Sabaton is another one, Gamma Ray—their first shows in the States. I was still a booking agent at the time, but I also worked with Glenn to facilitate the Pain of Salvation Remedy Lane set, and the Angra Holy Land set. Those are two that I often pat myself on the back for. It’s such a hard question though, right? Because there’s some politics that play into it. I don’t want to forget anybody. I don’t want to get anybody mad at me.

Talking about the festival lineup for this year, we’ve seen a lot of turnover, a lot of bands getting swapped out due to issues with artist visas caused by the current US administration and their policies. Can you describe what has changed and how it has affected the festival?

Visa issues are not anything new. As far back as 2010, the festival lost a bunch of bands due to visas. This year, there were some changes that affected the time that it takes for a visa to be processed at the [US Customs and Immigration Services] office. Some changes were made that pulled people out of those offices, and it caused those processing times to become longer. Before you could have a visa applied for, processed, and approved within two to four months—sometimes a little more, sometimes as fast as a few weeks. Once that change happened in January, we had already applied for most of our visas [for 2025], and the time frame changed to up to 10 months. The only thing you can do in those cases is to pay an exorbitant extra fee to expedite the process. On top of that, there’s been added scrutiny to the visa applications. I would love to say that it’s not a political thing, but it sort of is, right? No matter how much we try to plan for it: we started all of our visa petitions early this year, played by the rules, and still kind of got screwed in the end. And there were a bunch of bands that were not approved, simply because our government didn’t think that they were relevant enough or worthy enough to get a visa. So, yeah, it’s a mess. I don’t know how else I can put it.

I’m curious, you don’t have to name any names, but have you approached any bands from abroad who aren’t interested in even trying to perform on US soil right now given the current situation?

More than ever, we’ve gotten answers like, “I think we’re going to wait a few years.” This year, we had to expedite every visa petition. And it’s not looking like it’s going to change anytime soon. The government’s website just says what the average estimated time is. That doesn’t really mean anything. It costs about $8,000 to do an expedited visa, just to get them permission to enter the country, let alone all of the other expenses. So, a lot of bands are saying, you know what, it’s just not worth it. And we’re a 1,000 cap festival. We can only afford so much. So, I can understand when bands say, “You know what, unless we get paid double of what you’re offering, we can’t make it happen”. And it’s not because we’re trying to be cheap and lowball the bands; we pay very competitive rates. You know, it’s the biggest market for metal bands in the world, and it’s still one of the hardest for the bands to come and break in.

We’ve seen other festivals and artists, whether it’s because of COVID or different issues, try to defray costs with crowdfunding campaigns. I know ProgPower USA also ran a t-shirt campaign to help with costs when the pandemic resulted in delays and unexpected expenses. What do you think about this kind of approach versus across the board ticket price increases?

COVID really did a number on the industry in general. I think the one good thing that came out of it was people’s creativity in terms of finding ways to earn some money—not even to make money, just to keep things afloat. I think it’s really cool when they’re offering something that’s new and different and unique. I think it can become stale very quickly; it can become, “oh, there is another one doing crowdfunding”. Glenn had to do [a crowdfunding campaign] this year for the visa expedites, because the increase was almost three times as much as we had in the budget. We’re very grateful that we have a core audience that’s willing to jump in and help. I think it says a lot about the festival, and I like to believe that we make up to them in terms of the experience that we offer. You cannot count on ticket sales all the time, unfortunately.

The festival always announces the lineup a year in advance. So, for example, when attending the 2024 festival, fans will see [a video announcing] which bands are coming in 2025. What do you think are the merits or challenges with this approach versus other festivals like 70,000 Tons of Metal, which is notorious for being slow to release its lineup?

The biggest challenge has to do with scheduling. A lot of bands just cannot plan ahead that far in advance. There are bands that we’ve been speaking to to bring to the festival for a decade now, and they can never plan so far in advance. We announce it a year in advance, which means we have to start booking no later than 15 months in advance, which means we start thinking about the lineup longer than a year and a half away. Now we’re coming on to the 2025 edition. So, 2026[‘s lineup] is pretty much done. By the end of this year, I would start thinking about the following one, right? 2027. But you never know what’s going to happen. It’s hard, but I feel like we’ve succeeded enough that we have the recipe. We know what to look for when it comes to building a roster that will be relevant that far in advance. We also have a lot of colleagues and contacts; we’re always talking to bands, managers, agents, labels, so we have a good idea of who’s going to be releasing an album around announcement time and so on. But it’s a bit of a dance for sure. It’s challenging. 

I feel like the [lineup announcement video] is almost as exciting as any other band playing the festival. It has become such an important part of what ProgPower is, that I don’t think I could do it any other way. It’s really cool to see all the speculation that goes on in the months leading up to the festival, and then to watch the fans’ reaction to the videos. I think it’s an added bonus that other festivals have definitely gotten their inspiration from.

I think you can even win little prizes under the table if you guess all the bands correctly. 

Yeah, I’ve heard.

Is the viability of the advanced announcements approach changing due to the current situation? Would you ever consider shifting to later or staggered band announcements?

I think it’s still viable. It’s not an excuse, but 100% of the cancellations were never because we did something wrong as an entity, whether we messed something up or didn’t do a contract well enough. It’s always stuff that’s outside of our control, and I feel like our audience for the most part is very understanding of that. I think it’s the only viable way, to be honest with you, because I also have to compete with festivals all over the world, and now you can fly into Europe for like $300. So I have to get a head start on that. 

At The Progressive Subway, our core focus is on underground bands. And in fact, for the first few years that the publication was around, we only covered bands with less than 20,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. When you’re looking for younger or less established bands to bring onto the ProgPower USA roster, what makes a band stand out to you?

It really has to wow me. I’ve been coming to ProgPower since ProgPower III. I’ve seen a lot of bands get booked that everybody gets very excited about. And they’re really solid, but they last a few albums and either they move on or they see that it’s not viable, whatever it might be. And every now and then you find that one band that really just smacks you on your face and you’re like, “Holy crap.” Circus Maximus is an example. Seventh Wonder is an example. And more recently, I feel Nospūn is an example of that as well. It’s just a feeling that I get at this point, but it comes from years of watching the scene very closely, and finding little nuances or details that maybe other people are not thinking about. 

I also think a band could really wow you on their album, but if they’re really unestablished, they might not know how to perform live.

There is a very specific example of a band that played ProgPower. Incredible record. One of those records that remind you why you became a fan, and then they came on stage, and it was just a hot mess. And that is a very good example of what you’re saying. You know, they can wow you on record, but then they can’t play live. That was a big let down, I must say.

The original festival promoter, Glenn Harveston, has announced his intention to retire after the 25th festival next year, and you have been announced as his replacement, which I want to congratulate you for first of all. 

Thank you.

Do you have a mission statement for the future of ProgPower USA? Do you intend to change aspects of the festival, whether for the sake of making it your own or by necessity due to changing circumstances, or do you plan to stick to the model of the first 25 years?

I want to honour the legacy of what made ProgPower special for 25 years. It’s not just about the bands. It’s never been just about the bands. I remember very specifically the first time I went to ProgPower, just looking around and feeling—this is going to sound so cliche—belonging. Like I’m meant to be there, and I just have to come back. “I don’t care what happens next year. I have to be here”. And that was my mentality over the next 10 or so years. There were years that I was completely broke and friends of mine would be like, “You have to come, we’re paying for it”. Over the years, I heard the same kind of feeling from other people. So I think more important than anything is to maintain what ProgPower has been all about, which is this special event [where] you get to see all of these friends that you only see once a year, that also happens to have some really cool bands playing. And as a promoter, of course, it has to keep making money, too. It has to be commercially viable. The only big change I’m going to make is bringing the festival back to three days instead of four. A lot of people say that it’s more expensive for them to take one extra day off and pay an extra night at a hotel and so on. And also, I’ll be running this on my own. I also plan on offering a three-day pass, which is something that we haven’t been able to do, because we’re multiple promoters and we run the nights separately.

When we were preparing for this interview, you told me you probably wouldn’t be able to share any details about next year’s lineup. Of course, that made me want to ask about it. Knowing the core audience of The Progressive Subway, we love these kinds of underground or underappreciated bands that people maybe don’t get to hear from as often. Can you give a little teaser for us?

Next year is going to be very special because it’s Glenn’s last year. So you can expect a lineup that will blow people’s minds. Glenn is very proud of what he does with the festival, and I don’t think anyone should expect him to go out quietly. I’ll not speak to his days and his bands, but I can speak to Day Two. Out of the six bands on Day Two next year, only one will be a festival return. So five other bands have not been there. There will be a band that people will be saying, “Jesus, finally.” There will definitely be a band that people are going to say, “Who?” And a non-conventional headliner. I think ultimately it exemplifies what ProgPower is all about: There’s the progressive bands, there’s the power bands, there are the bands that people have no idea why they’re there, but somehow they work. I’m pretty happy with it.

Now people can go and start making their whiteboards, trying to figure out everything that you said.

Here’s one out of left field. What artist, band, song, album is living rent free in your head right now?

My favorite current band would be Sleep Token. I’m listening to the new Epica album quite a lot as well, and I just got the new Lorna Shore album as well. That has been my playlist. 

Is there anything else that we haven’t touched on about the festival or your role that you want to let people know about?

There are still tickets available for Days One and Two of the festival this year. And plenty of people reselling [tickets for Days Three and Four]. So, if somebody is on the fence about coming to the festival, there’s still ways to do it. And I know I’m biased, but it’s a special event. It’s been a rough year, but everyone’s still excited to attend. I don’t know if it’s a badge of honour, but [we have] the reputation of being able to replace [bands that drop out] at the same level or higher. You tell me. You keep coming back.

I look forward with a lot of optimism to see where the festival is going beyond its 25th year, which is huge. To last 25 years is really quite a legacy.

Like I said, I just hope to be able to keep it going. You know, Glenn got 25 years out of it. I have 10 now as a co-promoter. If I get another 10 or 15, I’m happy. We’ll see. 

Links: Facebook | Instagram | ProgPower USA Website

The post Interview: Milton Mendonça (ProgPower USA) appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

It’s worth noting that this was more conversational than the interviews we’ve done in the past. As such, I will do my very best to translate our conversation into questions and answers. If anything gets lost in translation, Alex has my email to send hate mail to.

Hey Alex! Keys to the Palace comes out next week. How are you feeling on the record’s release?

Good, man! It’s kinda trippy, like the music is quite old. I wrote this stuff when I first moved to Arizona, which was ten years ago. So, the fact that it’s coming out now is kinda relieving, I’d say.

I’m sure it is. How’d you know what to keep rolling with these past ten years?

With these songs specifically? I would say it’s the first material where it feels like I’m offering something unique. Everything before this album, when I was writing in high school, was much more…just any band I was in love with at the time. The stuff I write would sound like them. With Keys to the Palace, I felt like I was stumbling upon something original sounding. I never doubted that it was going to come out one day. Initially, I’d planned for it to come out before Aria, before Shadow Burn was even a thing. You know? Life just happens and things change. When I finished Aria I said, “OK, time to finally record this album.” I’m always writing music all the time. So, if I love something, I always plan on releasing it. There are songs that are just as old that I want to put on an album one day. Not so much cutting stuff, just preserving it and waiting until the time is right.

I’ve had Keys to the Palace for a few months now, the day ‘Dover Hendrix’ came out, and I was taken aback at how different it sounded. It had a completely different sound to Aria and Shadow Burn, and a lot cheerier. I remember you saying something about “summertime metal” or something like that—

Summertime soul metal.

Yeah! Why the sudden change?

It’s funny to talk about, with the music being older than both the last two releases. So, I just have to think about what I was listening to at the time. I was coming off a two-year binge of everything Devin Townsend. Strapping Young Lad and all of his solo stuff I was obsessed with. Really, the only other artist I’ve been like that with is Opeth, which is more in Aria. I never got too into the instrumental djent thing, but I remember being in love with a project called Chimp Spanner. I liked Cloudkicker at the time, Animals as Leaders, Joy of Motion came out and just blew my mind. It was a lot of the stuff that was a little bit brighter sounding stuff I was listening to. I was also channeling a lot of my older melodeath influences, Children of Bodom, Wintersun and Ensiferum. It’s kind of a mix of all that more triumphant sound.

The first thing I noticed was Keys is more maximalist than Aria and Shadow Burn, to the point where I was almost waiting for those slower sections to kick in. While the songs do have those, I feel that everything is firing off at all cylinders.

More explosive.

Way more explosive! I find the Strapping Young Lad comparisons interesting, because while this record is cheery, I find that it’s got a lot of your heaviest riffing.

Yeah! Groove wise and everything, it’s less of the last two albums, which was embracing my love of black metal, shoegaze and creating a schmear of sound. This one’s more riffy. More of a riff-fest, I think.

How’d you balance those heavy riffs and cheery atmosphere?

I guess that’s where Devin Townsned’s always been such a huge influence on me. His sense of harmony isn’t what you typically associate with death metal, at all. He always says he feels like Enya mixed with metal, and I’ve always been inspired by that. Ultimately, I don’t relate much to evil sounding metal harmony. I like some of it, but the first thing I loved about death metal, and hearing ‘Hammer Smashed Face’ for the first time was the rhythms. Just how heavy it is, the parts that make you want to windmill. I love that aspect of metal but when I’m talking harmony, I’m inspired by stuff that doesn’t have to do with metal at all. It’s just marrying the two together.

What about non-metal influences on Dessiderium?

Video game soundtracks. I could never say that enough, always a huge influence. Legend of Zelda soundtrack, Final Fantasy, Xenogears, all this stuff.

I hear a lot of Nobuo Uematsu.

Yeah, I love a lot of his soundtracks, all of it’s huge. I love a lot of soul and R&B type music; I’m not like a collector of albums but all the Spotify playlists I listen to are all that stuff. I’m very into rich harmonies that come from that whole world. More romantic sounding stuff, really.

Shadow Burn and Aria are very much channeling that evil sound. I guess that style of songwriting lends itself to a build-up and release approach, but there’s not much of that on Keys to the Palace. There’s a whole lot of “go”. Did those soul and R&B rhythm influences bleed into the riff-writing process?

I’d say more so that style influences the sense of harmonies and chord progressions that I build. The vocal harmonies, and that kind of thing. There’s way more clean singing on this album, and it comes from the fact that I love singing along to that kind of music in my car, and I wanted to do more of that. I felt like this music called for more singing in general, because it’s not as sinister sounding. I like harsh vocals, but there’s a lot more room to be creative with singing for this album.

One of the big things I noticed was that your clean vocals seem to be projected a lot more on this album, as opposed to those last two where they sort of blend into the background. Even the production sounds less murky, hazy, black metal-y. Was that you sort of stumbling around trying to figure something new out?

That’s a good question! I’m not going to say the production was against my will, because that’s not the case. I’m kind of a noob when it comes to audio production. The guy who mixed and mastered it, Mendel, did the last two albums, and I’ve learned to trust his process and what he pictures for it. When he sent the first mix, though, it felt too “in my face” in a way. I’m used to having the singing more blended, but when I showed a bunch of friends they said the style of singing calls for it to be in front of the mix. That’s taken me a lot to get used to, because I’m not that confident of a singer. I sometimes think it could’ve been more blended at times, but overall I’m happy that it’s a different sound, rather than just repeating what we did with the last two.

You still used Brody Smith as a drum programmer. I’m not sure if you write the drums and send them to him, or if he writes and programs them for you.

I have ideas of how I want the drums to sound. So, I send him a rough track, and then he goes crazy with it, and I tell him what I want to keep or what he can go farther with.

So, why programmed drums?

The project is such a “bedroom project”, I haven’t had many opportunities to take it on the road. There’s not a lot of return financially for it, so I value the fact that we can do something budget-friendly. Honestly, I hate giving this as an excuse, but a lot of bands will just resample their drums, even when they do perform them live in the studio. So, to have that option to work with someone like Brody who can make it sound as if—he confuses a lot of people, a lot of people don’t even think they’re programmed.

I didn’t know. I had no idea initially.

That’s a luxury of today’s tech that I take advantage of. For the next album, we’re talking about him playing live drums. Because there’s something special about that too, of course. It’s just been convenience, really.

Despite you saying that it’s a bedroom project, you now have a live band. How was that whole process of figuring out these humongous songs live?

I had to find people who I knew could play them! Everything we’ve done has been with a different drummer. Jay, who plays bass, was going to fill in for Arkaik, but that never happened. I knew he was an amazing bass player, so I remembered him. I discovered his brother, Ben, from Instagram. I was like, “Dude, is that your brother? He shreds really hard!” The guy who I share harsh vocals with, his name is Cameron, and him and I have been doing a project for ten years now called Nullingroots, and he’s had a project called Light Dweller. He’s really showcasing how crazy of a vocalist he is.

You’ve got Nullingroots, Arkaik, and a ton of other projects. Did any of those outside influences bleed into the album in a way?

No, just because I’ve been doing Dessiderium for so much longer. That’s my heart and soul, and with Arkaik and Nullingroots it’s been joining a band and trying to fit my way into that sound. I’m playing in Atheist now, too, so that’s got a whole legacy behind it that I’m trying to fit into. But Dessiderium is me in my most musical, pure form.

You’ve been talking about re-releasing your debut album, Life was a Blur for a while now. Tell me about that.

Yeah, I hate how that album sounds. It’s a constant reminder that I didn’t know what I was doing back then, but I still like the music. It’s not music I’d write anymore, but I have a lot of nostalgia with those songs. I just want them to exist where people can actually enjoy listening to them, because the music’s pretty cool. I started that back when COVID hit and quarantine was happening, and I thought it’d be a nice little project, but then I started writing Shadow Burn and that took all my energy. It’s almost done! I just need to redo vocals for it, maybe have Brody redo the drums. There’s just so much other stuff happening that it’s easy to put on the backburner. I do plan on releasing it one day.

Not sure if you know them, Lykathea Aflame?

Yeah!

They’re one of the only death metal bands I’ve heard that use major scale riffing, and one of the things I noted in my review of Aria was there was a lot of major scale stuff in that album. There’s even more in Keys. Can you talk a little bit about going against the conventional metal riff-writing vein and how that fits into writing death metal songs?

Keys to the Palace is almost entirely in major key, the entire time. I think that major key has a stereotype of sounding happy, and I think that’s an insult because harmony’s way more complex than that! To me, writing emotional stuff in a major key creates that bittersweet feeling, which is my favorite feeling to capture in music. You can do that in minor, of course, but I feel that harmony in major key is really beautiful. Especially practicing some dissonance in that too. It’s that weird distortion of happy feelings that I’m attracted to.

There’s a lot of dissonance on Keys, and I really don’t understand how you make major key sound so heavy, but I guess that’s just the magic of it.

It’s not something I’ve thought too much about. I have my metal influences, and they can come through rhythmically and groove-wise, and dissonance wise even. But you apply that to a major key and it’s got a foreign feel for metal music.

You’ve been very outspoken about Opeth, and how much you love them. There’s a lot of Opeth influence on the older music, but there’s basically none on the new album. It seems that you, more or less, took the reins and went in blind. A lot of the prog-death stuff takes Opeth as the holy grail for a reason, but aside from the song lengths, I didn’t find Keys to sound like Opeth at all. What changed in the formula to make it sound a little less Opeth?

I have to remember, I’m writing a lot of this stuff back in 2014. Wintersun, one of my favorite bands, had just put out Time I. I think it came out in 2012? Hearing the three songs on that album, these massive epic songs. Especially track two, ‘Suns of Winter and Stars’, just like an epic multi-movement song. Still riffs super hard, without being in the Opeth way of repeating a chord progression for a while—which I love—but that inspired me and compounded with my love for old prog rock. That can be very riffy as well, but hearing those power metal riffs in the context of these almost fifteen minute songs…I think I’d be lying if I said that album wasn’t a part of my DNA when writing Keys.

It’s been fifteen years since you started Dessiderium. What has changed as far as going from that first demo tape you released—that I had to scour the internet for—

Is it there somewhere?

It’s on Youtube, if you wanna go find it.

No thanks.

How has the music evolved since that first demo and full-length to now?

When that demo came out, I actually had a live lineup at the time. I was obsessed with the idea of making a band out of it, touring, doing all the band things. It never really panned out the way I wanted it to. Also, a huge thing is I finally finished the first album, and I saw a few people commenting on it, even people who like it said I needed to find a mixing engineer. Suddenly, I went “Oh my god, I’m hearing it with their ears”, and I was disappointed by how it came out. It was right when I finished high school and I was going to university right after, so I stepped away from music for a little bit. I tuned in to other things in life. I was such a hermit with music in high school, and I missed a lot of experiences. So, I was trying to make up for that in college. But I ended up writing a shit-ton of music all throughout college. When I finished, I had to get back into it. Joining Arkaik also thrust me back into it, playing music, and learning from how those guys recorded, I applied it to my own music and made a good sounding album.

With the music evolving, there’s also been more symphonics added each album. There’s layers of MIDI instrumentals going on in the album, despite a real piano being used on ‘Dover Hendrix’ and ‘Pollen ForThe Bees’. Is this tapping into the video game OST influence, or is it merely for cost and time efficiency? 

Yeah, you nailed it. Both of those things are true. I would really like to get into making orchestrations, because you can make them sound real. Some of the future stuff I’m working on is going to dip into that. Doing four or five albums with the same kind of MIDI sounds is getting a little…I don’t want to say stale, but predictable. I’ve always leaned into the fact that it sounds more video game-like if I use the MIDI instruments, and if I don’t mess with them that much. I just let a fake synth sound like a fake synth, or the strings sound super not realistic. Not like Septicflesh where it sounds like a huge orchestra, kind of lean into that cheaper, fake sound.

What other video game composers can you say influenced you on the album?

I always have to shout out Stewart Copeland for his Spyro soundtrack. That’s so huge for me, specifically the level Lofty Castle. The music in that level is one of my favorite pieces of music ever. Just really whimsical piano melodies, where all the intervals are spread apart, and it’s one of those things that I think about all the time. Especially when I program piano parts.

Are you drawn to a lot of these composers because of the more maximalist approach of how the Japanese composers tend to write their music?

Yeah, yeah. As opposed to the dungeon synth-y stuff. JRPGs feel very inspired by old prog rock, with those beautiful, magical flute melodies over string movements. I’m addicted to the formula, and I think they’re unmatched in terms of how well they match the atmosphere of whatever part of the game you’re at. That whole relationship of music and listening to these soundtracks while I’m not playing the game, I feel like I’m part of the world, and that’s the beautiful, escapist part of music to me. Those composers do that the best for me.

You have a lot more of a poetic approach to lyrical writing. It seems like it’s less standard metal lyric writing, and it almost feels like something that you’ve written in stream of consciousness and you stick it in songs where you think it fits. What about literary influences?

I’m way more inspired by that than a lot of other bands. There’s been certain big books for me…Vladimir Nabokov is one of my favorite writers, so his style I feel like I straight up copied for a while. Very inspired by his writing. Even guys like David Foster Wallace, that brutally transparent kind of writing. Whatever I’m reading at the time that I’m touched by has found a way into my writing style. I’ve also always been into writing, I like journaling. I’m more into a transparent, vulnerable kind of writing style. To me, I can’t write like a sci-fi thing, because I don’t see the point of doing it. It’s typically when I’m down in the dumps that I write well, because momentarily I don’t care about people reading it and can just be real. It’s funny that you said stream of consciousness, because I have vocal patterns in mind that I get really attached to, so it’s like filling in the blanks. Oftentimes, I’ll keep cutting it down until I can fit the vocal patterns.

Do you ever find great ideas for a lyric while you’re journaling?

Uh, no, not really. If I’m like, in my feels and listening to a song I made, I’ll just get the urge to put pen to paper and see if something comes out that adequately represents what the song is making me feel.

You worked with Adam Burke for the past two albums now, and this was the first commissioned piece from him. Tell me about the process.

For Aria, he already had the piece done. I saw it, and I was just like, “That’s the front cover, that’s perfect”. I bought that one, but with this one, I wanted the art to resemble a park I grew up near called Dover Hendrix. It’s kind of like a big symbol for the album. I sent him a picture that I took and he recreated it. I wanted the sewage gate tunnel, instead of being a sewage gate, to be a portal into the future. A different world. It’s about the sunny area that’s completely based off that park.

Like Aria, this is a concept album, and you seem to be very explicit in mentioning Dover Hendrix. This seems to have a recurring theme of childhood and a more hopeful or uplifting message than Aria does. I’m not the greatest at analyzing lyrical concepts, so could you tell me a little about the concept?

Initially, when I was writing it, those ten years ago when I was new to Arizona, the first song I wrote was ‘Dover Hendrix’. That song just conjured up so many nostalgic feelings for me, and it was the first time I lived in a new place away from where I grew up. I was writing all the music as a tribute to all the happy memories I had during childhood. I had a very fortunate childhood, I almost view it as a heaven on earth thing, a time of serenity. But now that I’m finally doing the album closer to age thirty, it felt weird talking about childhood, I’m a little far removed from that. It became this concept where it’s like the child self and the adult self meet, and the adult self relearns the value of life from his child self, but also the child self gets to peer into the future and get that first sense of anxiety. Dark things to come. That tension between the two.

I feel that the album’s central message is along the lines of “it’s going to be a struggle, but it’ll all be ok in the end”.

Yeah, I’d say the album ends on a neutral note. The end of the last song gets pretty dark, and musically it’s pretty bright, but the last line is “What did you do to me?”, which is supposed to be the child self asking the adult self how things went wrong. There’s no clear victory, it’s just “OK that’s what we talked about for this album and now it’s done”. Just acceptance of everything.

Lighting round! Any favorite smaller bands that you want to shout out?

Oh, man. I’d have to think. A few of them aren’t even active anymore, I think. One of them is a band called Bal-Sagoth. They haven’t been active for a while, but I listen to them all the time! I discovered them back in 2018-2019. If you’re into fantasy metal, power metal, melodeath, check them out. Best use of keyboards I’ve ever heard. Another band called Lunar Aurora, another band I’ve spent so much time with that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. I think they disbanded too. There’s gonna be a million others that I’m gonna remember and be upset I didn’t shout them out.

Favorite Final Fantasy game and character?

Favorite game is FF7, I know it’s a generic answer. It’s the first one I played, and I got into JRPGs kinda late. All those games were really overwhelming when I was six or seven, with all the reading. They’re huge! Towards the end of high school, I revisited my collection and that’s when I got into them. Favorite character? The knight from FF9, the big dude, Steiner. He just cracks me up. But also, Aerith from 7, powerful storyline.

If you could be transported into one fictional world, where would it be and why?

Oh, dude, damn. The obvious one would be Lofty Castle from Spyro 2. It’s responsible for the reason I love the color pink. The skies are all this beautiful pink. That whole world, Dreamweavers, from Spyro 1, that’s been a magical place for me for a long time. Any others would probably be from Zelda. Maybe Lake Hylia from Twilight Princess or the Fields of Hyrule.

What are some of the albums that have been on heavy rotation for you recently?

I’ve been slacking on music recently, if I’m being honest. I’ve listened to Time II a ton. I bought the whole package because I’m a die hard nerd for that band, and I’ve been listening to the battle album, I think that’s what it’s called? [Fantasy Metal Project by Jari Mäenpää] It feels like where Ensiferum left off. The new Opeth album, I’ve been listening to that. I’m not in love with it, but it’s some of the best stuff I’ve heard from them in years. Classical, post-romantic stuff. Arnold Schoenberg. Not a whole lot of albums.

My thanks to Alex for his time and taking part in this interview. Keys to the Palace drops March 14th on Willowtip Records, and you can go read the review now! I, and everyone else at the Subway, wish him a very happy release day and thank him for the amazing music he’s put out!

Links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | | Metal-Archives Page

The post Interview: Alex Haddad (Dessiderium) appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Matt: Hey, how’s it going?

Oliver: Good, how are you?

M: Good… I sort of came out of retirement for this, actually. I haven’t reviewed anything for these guys in a year or two, but I’ve been listening to Everon for 20 years or something.

O: Really?

M: Yeah, so I said, “somebody here has to cover this.”

O: But you look relatively young, from what I can see on this tiny screen. You were an early bird, for progressive rock.

M: Well, this was around when Flesh came out, maybe. We actually talked a bit on the old band forum, I was just some annoying teenager… I was asking you about songwriting at the time, and you said, “just do it in your brain, write it in 20 minutes…”

O: That’s true, it’s still what I do actually.

M: I don’t think that’s a normal ability.

O: Oh, ask Devin Townsend about it, he can do that every day and make five albums a year. Frankly, I believe that is the normal thing to do. I just think it is a mindset, and by the time you discover how it works, I actually think this is the natural way of composing. I don’t think that any of the Beethovens of the world, or whatever… They didn’t read any of the books that people wrote about them, right? Where it explains all their composition techniques, and all this stuff. Because frankly, I don’t think they had one.

M: That’s a good position to be in. For me, I’m happy with the results, but it’s still a grueling, months-long process.

O: Maybe you don’t trust yourself. I think that’s often where it goes wrong. I’ve been there myself, it’s not like it always works that way. But I learned that the less I put my brain into it, the better it seems to work. I believe that for the creative part – not the arranging and production, that takes tons of time – but for the actual song ideas, I think you have to let it happen and trust it, because sometimes you may not understand what it is. Don’t second guess yourself, just run with it, and at some point it will fall into place. The thoughts that are good to get out of your head are the expectations of what it is supposed to sound like, or what audience it’s supposed to appeal to. All these things just put you on the wrong track. Just see what comes out naturally, because that is your own voice. Nobody else is entitled to an opinion about it. Of course they all have opinions, but you shouldn’t bother. In the process, I believe you should let nothing between your inspiration and what you’re doing. Not even bandmates or anything. They’re not in your head. Afterwards, you can debate over everything, but I personally prefer not to show or present any idea before I’ve finished it the way I think it should be. Maybe it doesn’t work that way for everybody, but for me that’s how it goes.

Also, with this album, I wrote all the music in less than three months. I had nothing, no music collected. I had no intention to make an Everon album, so before signing a deal for it, I didn’t even think about it. And by the time I set my mind on it, it came like a charm, actually. I cannot explain how it goes, but it happens. And I think my part in this is to let it happen… To not get in the way and ruin it.

M: So with this album, you didn’t have any goals or preconceptions of what it should sound like compared to the old ones…

O: I haven’t heard any of the old ones, I have no idea. Before I agreed we should make an album, I had been thinking a bit… I wasn’t sure if I would be able to come up with anything that would sound like Everon. In all these years, I’ve made tons of songs, but nothing that was in this genre of music. So I didn’t know if what would come up would fit an Everon album. But I just jumped in at the deep end, let’s say, and it kind of worked. I don’t even know… does it sound similar to Everon albums before now? I have no opinion there.

M: It’s always going to sound somewhat like you, right? Whether you like it or not.

O: I guess so, in one way or another, but I had no intention that it should sound like a continuation of anything. 

M: It definitely has a bigger mix, at least. More modern. I like it. I would definitely place this in the top two or three Everon albums, I think, based on the listens I’ve had.

O: What would be your number one?

M: Probably either Fantasma or Flesh.

O: Okay.

M: But there’s so many faces to it, right… Even within the same album, there’s three or four different kinds of song. So with all this diversity in the tracks… Who is the most likely Everon fan?

O: Maybe that’s why we don’t have so many, because it’s confusing people! I never had any intention of fitting a musical genre or anything. Honestly, I’m not making this up, before we signed a deal with a progressive rock label back then, I didn’t even know the term. It’s all just music, one song is as good as the other. There can be heavy things, small weird things, it can be a ten-minute piece, it doesn’t matter. I learned to embrace progressive rock as a term, in the sense that it apparently allows me to do whatever comes up, and nobody complains because “it’s progressive, you can do that.” Also, if I think about music that I like, it’s things from all different genres.

M: It sounds likely that you had at least heard Duke, or you know, 80s Genesis albums at that point, right?

O: I had, when I was a kid… I don’t even know which Genesis albums, but I had a five year older brother. I remember that at some point, I also had a bunch of cassette tapes that I found interesting. I was maybe ten, eleven or something, and I played many of them not even knowing what I was listening to. I don’t know if I’d be able to remember a song off that album, but I’m sure there’s songs on there that I’ve heard.

M: What’s your relationship to metal music, in particular? It sounds like you must listen to some, but it’s rare that a song is heavy the entire way through for you.

O: I’ve been producing a lot of heavy music. As a producer, most of the bands I work with are metal bands, a lot of symphonic metal, and I like doing that very much. I also had, I think when I was fourteen or fifteen – you know at that age, things change quickly – I had a time where I listened to stuff like Genesis and Saga, and then it was a year or two with just metal, and then it was fusion jazz… Could be whatever comes in. So I had a short metal period, but I have no particular relation to the metal genre. I do like heavy guitars. This is the element that I really like from it. I’m not a big fan of fast double bass drums or funny metal screams, though as a singer I’ve been guilty of trying some, which I’m terribly embarrassed with…! But in general, I find much of the singing in metal kind of over-acted. I prefer singing that is more raw or touching, although there are exceptions. But the element I like most is heavy guitars. And not even for fast riffing or anything, but I just like the epicness they bring. It’s a very powerful tool in an arrangement when you can throw in the super low-tuned heavy, fat guitars, I love that.

M: Do you have any favorite musicians right now, in any genre of music?

O: There’s so many, you find awesome musicians in all sorts of music… You’d really have to go by instrument or by genre or something, it wouldn’t be fair to just mention a few. I can think of musicians that have been super influential in my formative years… For guitar playing, I would have to think of somebody like Steve Lukather or Gary Moore. Those were kind of my role models for guitar tone. What appealed to me the most was not the fast stuff, but getting this beautiful tone. With drummers, it would be guys like Neil Peart or Manu Katché… Totally different style, but awesome musician. When you think of keyboards, mainly piano players, you cannot get past Billy Joel, or even Elton John, or later Tori Amos, the people that really defined how to play a piano in rock or pop music. Also, I’ve had the occasion to work with a lot of wonderful musicians myself over the years. You know, I do a lot myself, I play a lot of instruments, but for everything I’m doing, I’ve met others who are doing at least one of these things much better than I do. You learn a bit from everybody. Much of what I do, I really learned in the years after starting to be a producer, just working with a lot of other musicians. Most bands, you will have one guy or so who has something really “wow,” and then by working together… I hope they learn something from me, but it also goes the other direction. That just makes your toolkit bigger, and I appreciate that.

M: So your production career… I’ll hear an album sometimes and think “you know, that kinda sounds like Everon,” and then I’ll find out you did string arrangements on it or something. You’ve been doing consistent, full-time music work for the last however many years, right?

O: Yes, I have. I have never had a proper job in my entire life. So for some people, this has been presented as a comeback thing, but it doesn’t feel like that for me at all. Just, instead of working on somebody else’s album or writing film music or whatever, I’ve been working on an Everon album. But in a way, it’s my regular line of work, with the difference that here I’m of course doing entire compositions… The biggest difference is actually that I have to sing. That is the thing I normally avoid.

M: Is it working well for you though, compared to an office job?

O: Yeah, I’m not complaining. Of course, speaking financially or security-wise, I can guarantee you there’s more reasonable careers to put on than this one, but of course it also comes with privileges. So far, I’ve managed to make a living out of something I really love doing, so it doesn’t really feel like work. Of course, in production work there’s also things that are not fun. If you sit there for five days editing drums or vocals or whatever, that is just stuff that has to be done that comes with it. But for the most part it’s something I really enjoy doing. I also enjoy that it gave me the opportunity to explore a lot of different genres. It’s very inspiring to work with other artists that can bring their vision of things. They invite me to collaborate, and I love doing that.

M: Not a lot of people can claim to have succeeded at that.

O: Ehhh, succeeded, haha. Some say so. Something I’m terribly bad at is all the networking and things like that.

M: You’re a social media skeptic, right?

O: Ah, skeptic is the least you could say. Now I have to kind of do it, because Mascot Records convinced me it has to be done, but we have somebody at the record company helping with that. So I try my best to interact with people there, but I would never do that on my own initiative. For me this is really strange things in a strange land.

M: They tell you you have to put out five memes per day or something like that…

O: Sometimes I work with much younger artists, like recently two different ones from Berlin. Kind of an urban music scene, totally different stuff… One of them was using the same mix engineer that we used for the album, and this is how the connection came. They wanted some acoustic versions of songs, and asked Tom if he knew somebody who could do piano and strings, whatever. These young kids, they don’t even do music videos anymore. Music videos are out, and now you just do 30-second Tiktoks. Ok? I don’t know what will be ten years from now…

M: Maybe ten-second Tiktoks.

O: But yeah, if you think commercially, you have to kind of count that in. You have to make your point in 30 seconds, and the rest is just like, keep it rolling a bit, which is not exactly my approach to music. 

M: Being asked to make a Tiktok, my soul would crumble…

O: No, I refuse that. I told the label right away, ok, we can do Facebook, and they convinced me to do Instagram, but I told them Tiktok is the limit. And they were fine with that.

M: So you’ve been working this whole time, it’s not that much of a change for you… What was the motivation, in this case, to make an album again? Is it a compulsion of sorts? Was it just convenient?

O: It came out of coincidence. I was in touch with the owner of Mascot Records after many years, about something totally else, and I really just made the joke that we still had an option in our record contract from 10-15 years ago. I didn’t mean it seriously, but I said “if you’re silly enough to take the option, maybe I’m silly enough to think of a record,” and he jumped on it right away. I thought he was just joking too, but he said “why don’t you think about it, I think that could be really interesting.” My thought was always that it would be interesting to absolutely nobody. So it’s not that I thought much about making an album or not with Everon… I was just convinced that nobody would care. It’s not like we were Iron Maiden or something.

M: When you posted that first single, a lot of people were very touched by it.

O: But nobody was more surprised than I was! I was happy with how the songwriting had gone, and how the album turned out, so I was feeling a sense of accomplishment that I didn’t make an idiot of myself here. But I was genuinely afraid that Mascot was sinking its money, investing in this production. Most of all, on their behalf, I was hoping that it would generate at least some decent kind of interest, but I didn’t expect much. So anything above complete indifference is already a positive surprise, and I was kind of shocked how many people reacted, and it sounded like it would really mean something to them. I wasn’t aware there were people missing us, actually.

M: This was the strangest album announcement… The last thing I ever expected to hear. But suddenly, wow, it’s like it’s the 2000s again.

O: Yeah, but also, you know the band never retired officially. We never talked about retiring… We just didn’t make an album. I didn’t think there was much point to it, and I kind of enjoyed all these other things I was doing… There was no space in my head for it. I got a bit of the taste back for doing albums of my own in 2015. I had a project then named Phantasma, with Georg Neuhauser (the singer of Serenity) and Charlotte Wessels from Delain. We wrote the music together, and I kind of liked that. I thought maybe it would be nice to make an album again, with just my own music… But I really thought I had no platform, because I didn’t think there would be any interest. If I would have asked Mascot Records in 2015, maybe they would have been even happier, only making an album seven years later instead of 17 years. They never asked either, in my defense…

M: The rerecording of Flesh on this album is interesting… That’s probably one of the band’s most noteworthy songs, just about as close to a perfect song as you could ask for. What made you want to rerecord it?

O: Ugh, I was so unhappy with it! But I understand it was one of your favorites. That was entirely my initiative. It was explicitly meant to be a bonus track, so I didn’t suggest it until I had all the new songs written. This one never sat right with me. What you cannot know, is how often we tried to mix it. I think we mixed that song 20 or 30 times, and it never fell into place. And the reason for that is that I fucked it up in the arrangement. It was my first real shot at orchestra together with the sound of a metal or rock band. 

M: You mean the notes, or the editing of the instruments?

O: The notes. Of course, in the years after, one of the things I did most was orchestra for metal bands, so then I really learned that craft, and everything I had done wrong. The way I had arranged it, there was no way the guitars and the orchestra would ever separate. So the keys on their own sounded marvelous. Understand, back then, we didn’t have these orchestra libraries, so that was all made with hardware samplers. Not all of it aged super well, but back then it was state-of-the-art, so that wasn’t the concern. It sounded great on its own. Then, I did all the guitars, and it also sounded great on its own. Then, put it all together, and you hear nothing! You could always hear the guitars and the orchestra fighting with each other everywhere. You can try to find some remedy with funny EQ settings or levels to get things to the front where you want them, but this is all like damage reduction. It just wasn’t a good arrangement. And becoming known for doing that kind of work, it bugged me to have a song out there that I stand responsible for, that falls short. So, if there was one thing that was a compulsion, it was that. For the rest, I am totally at peace with whatever we’ve done in the past. I’m sure there are things I would do differently now, or that were terrible, but it was all the best I could do at the time. I let go, and it’s finished. But that one bugged me, because I have a certain reputation for doing orchestra, and I didn’t like that there was something out there so terribly made. But I’m happy to hear that you liked it!

M: Terrible, you say… I understand, though, you don’t have any control over how you feel about the stuff you’ve done.

O: Of course not. Speaking as a professional, I know the mistakes I’ve made. I can hear where it goes wrong, I know exactly what I need to change. 

M: It doesn’t help when people say “it’s good, it’s good,” either.

O: No, not at all. Also not when they say “it’s bad.” This is what I meant earlier. Whatever it is, once you release something, you have to live with peoples’ opinions. And they will always be controversial. You have guys that love what you do, you have guys that think it’s horrible, you have guys that think they know better… And you shouldn’t listen to any of that. It doesn’t help. You can only really follow your own vision and hope that it resonates with somebody, but don’t expect that it resonates with everybody. It makes you insecure, it makes you second guess yourself, and you’re trying to kind of please other people… It makes no sense. I’m not saying you shouldn’t take advice. That’s something different. When I’m not certain or something goes wrong, I have people who I know and trust, and whose opinion I value, because they understand what I’m looking for. But you cannot throw something out in public and then try to filter all the opinions coming in, because it just will not help.

M: How much control do you really have over your musical output anyway? You can steer the ship a little bit, but it’s hard to force any particular thing to happen.

O: You can… I’m not saying you should. I’ve been also doing quite a lot of what you call “production music,” that is, music for film or TV or commercials. And there, you have to cater to a particular expectation. This is a totally different mindset. You can always do that, this is craftsmanship. I’ve done that a lot, and it can actually be fun. But when it is about, like you say, really writing your own original stuff which is supposed to as honestly as possible represent who you are at that point in your life, then I think you have to be true to yourself and nobody else. Also, live with whatever comes out. Sometimes, something may come out which makes it feel weird. Like often with lyrics, most of that comes very intuitively… I put some time into getting the language good, kind of like a poem, whatever… But for the actual content, it happens more often than not that I have no idea what I’m writing about when I start. There’s single lines that come already while working on the music, and then later it’s connecting the dots until it forms a picture… And sometimes it forms a picture that is not a picture you like. But it is apparently something that relates to me at that point in my life, and I roll with it.

M: They sound like they’re about real things more often than not.

O: Many of them are. There are many where I could exactly tell you – which I of course wouldn’t – what it is about… But still, it sometimes expresses the way I feel about things clearer than I would verbalize it when talking about it. In a way, there are less limitations. There are normally things you would hold back, or thoughts you don’t even want to have. You kind of just let it come out, like therapy sessions or something, and then you look it and say “that’s not nice.” But this comes from your head, and you have to accept that.

M: So, going forward with the band – and you don’t have to answer if you don’t know or want to – but with the passing of Moschus [Everon’s drummer since 1989], that’s a pretty big part of the band’s identity, right? Do you still have plans for the future of Everon?

O: First of all, this is of course a big bummer for potential live activity. We were never the most busy live band, but we were thinking about it. Doing that without Moschus… Of course nothing is impossible, but it’s difficult to imagine. Besides being the drummer, he was also the technical genius, kind of the MacGyver of the band, so there’s more to replace than just a drummer. There’s also much more there to replace as a friend than a band member, which is something nobody can replace. I’m not saying we’re not going to make an album. With the way we work, I could probably find another drummer, like we did with Jason [Gianni, drummer on three songs on Shells]. I honestly don’t know. In a way, we just finished this album because of him, because he would have come haunting us from the grave if we didn’t. He had recorded most of his parts already, and he was probably the most enthusiastic guy about all of it. To him, it meant a lot. Throwing all that away and not releasing it was not an option. Let me put it this way… I have no intention that we should end it here. If there is interest in the album when it comes out, and if there are people that want more, I will definitely consider the option of doing another one. But first, let this one come out and see what happens.

M: Thanks for doing the interview.

O: It was my pleasure. Take care.

Thank you to Oliver for giving us some of his time.

Shells releases on 28 February 2025.

Links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

The post Interview: Everon appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Hi guys! It’s truly an honor to be speaking with such legends of prog! To get us started, how did you experience the 80s metal scene at large as a young band playing at the same time as Slayer, Celtic Frost, Venom, and Death? I figure that you have better insight than anybody! What are some of your favorite memories from the olden days of metal?

Jason: Our young minds were overblown with excitement, as we somehow got the call for the opening slots for a lot of the up and coming groundbreaking bands. Celtic Frost, Voivod, Trouble, King Diamond, Anthrax and more. We were having a blast. We just did our thing and then loaded out and enjoyed witnessing bands that rose to staggering heights throughout the years. Fun times for sure.

Ron: I remember lots of gigs with WatchTower, Helstar and S. A. Slayer. I was in S. A. Slayer at this time. We had the infamous Slayer vs. Slayer gig in San Antonio. That was probably the highlight for me.

Doug: For sure, some of our mid-1980s shows in Texas at long-gone but iconic venues like the Ritz in Austin and the Cameo in San Antonio are great memories. Going back to the beginning, we had a blast playing local parties, with a mix of some of our very early original songs and a lot of cover tunes by Rush, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Saxon, Raven and all of the incredible bands from that era.

I’ve seen you refer to your vocals as “pissed off Geddy Lee” before: were Rush a big influence on you, and, if so, what’s your favorite Rush album? Which other progressive bands inspired you to break the boundaries of metal at that point in 1984/85?

Jason: I love the first six records by Rush; 2112 might be my “go to” Rush record, but the things they were doing that were even just a bit more ‘rock n roll’ I still enjoy to this day. By the time they reached Moving Pictures, another great record that jumped the line between prog metal and radio friendly rock, I was already starting to get into weirder and heavier metal. By the time 1983 came, it was more about Euro metal and, above all, Bay Area thrash. The new wave of British Heavy metal encouraged me to stick to the rock n roll vibe in my voice, but also to go beyond and try things. Venom and then Raven, with guttural punk throaty stuff and then super high twisted screeching, I tried to mix. 

Ron: Rush is my favorite band of all time. Just like Jason, the first albums all the way up to Moving Pictures. Signals had a bit too much keyboards, so that’s when I drifted off. My favorite Rush albums are 2112, All The World’s A Stage, A Farewell To Kings and Hemispheres. Rush was also the band that introduced me to writing music with Morse Code (“YYZ”) which led to writing with all the alphabet, phone numbers, names, street addresses, etc… and later all 12 notes (12-tone). So that all pretty much destroyed my way of musically thinking LOL. I also listened to Al Di Meola quite a bit.

Doug: Rush was definitely the biggest influence for me. I remember listening to A Farewell to Kings for the first time and it was life-changing, pretty much what made me start playing. The period between All The World’s A Stage through Exit…Stage Left was just unmatched, an incredible band at the top of their game. I’d probably choose Hemispheres as my all-time favorite album. Some other progressive bands like King Crimson, UK, and the Bill Bruford solo albums with Jeff Berlin were also influential.

I have also seen critics hate your “pissed off Geddy Lee” vocals. Have any creative insults been directed at Watchtower? And are there any creative compliments that have stayed with you?

Jason: The “insults” were rather expected. I was barely singing at that early point, it took a bit to figure out how to do what I was trying to do with any real power. So, then to get spit at for how crazy I wanted my vocals to be with the crazy riffs I was writing melodies over, I took it with a grain of salt. I still listen to John from Raven and lots of old Geddy Lee. It’s wild how those guys just took what Plant, and Halford and Ian Gillan and the like, to a crazy psychotic new level. So, if I got thrown out, maybe they dealt with some haters, too.Ron: That all goes with the territory. Do something that’s not too common and you get crucified for it. Since I love Geddy’s voice, anybody who says Jason sounds like a pissed off Geddy, I’d take that as a compliment. I remember the first time I heard Jason’s vocals on the Energetic Disassembly songs, I pictured this demented looking gigantic rat with humongous balls screaming his ass off while holding a microphone. And yes, that’s a compliment. I remember some magazine reviews of WatchTower mentioned that we couldn’t write songs, that it was just a bunch of notes. I guess since we didn’t have common structures for songs, they had a hard time grabbing on to something.

Doug: It definitely seemed to be a “love it or hate it” thing. There are a couple of one-star reviews of Control and Resistance on Amazon that are pretty funny. I think one of them said something like, with that album progressive metal had hit an evolutionary dead-end like a two-headed fish, LOL.

WatchTower’s influence has been instrumental to the formation of the progressive metal world, inspiring big names such as Dream Theater, Symphony X, Cynic, Atheist, and Devin Townsend and continuing to inspire new bands. How does it feel to look upon an entire genre and hear your influence on its development?

Jason: That part of the story is, was, completely unexpected. Discovered early by a few folks, Chuck Schuldiner, Gene Hoglan, Tom Warrior and Mike Portnoy, who are some of my heroes who truly have helped create and keep alive the ideas of keeping heavy music/ loud rock music from becoming stagnant, they all carry or carried the flag for us. Mind blown again. We were just kids.

Ron: It’s really cool for me when I see so many kids on youtube playing songs that I’ve written and/or recorded, whether it’s songs by WatchTower, Blotted Science, Spastic Ink or solo material. I also totally dig it when a younger band comes to town and I sometimes end up on their guest list and I get to hang out with these kids.

Doug: It’s not at all anything we could have expected when we were writing those songs! 

Where’d the band name come from? It’s snappy and memorable.

Jason: I believe Doug came up with that, if memory serves me correct. I love it. There is the idea of an observation post, and the reports cannot always be good. Usually the lyrics and music were all together attempts to destroy mediocrity. It also had the message that art should be fun and wild and not just a painting of some fruit in a bowl.

Doug: I saw the word watchtower in a book at school, and it just kind of stuck in my head, and when we needed a name it just fell into place. It’s a little unusual but it goes along with the idea that even in the early days we observed and wrote about things going on in the world.

Do you prefer hyper-technical music in your daily listening as a contrast to what you perform yourself, and/or do you prefer playing it? Who do you all listen to regularly?

Jason: I listen to everything, and then again, I listen to nothing. Music is a life for me that never ends. So, after working on music, teaching music, or mixing, etc, I do not want to hear much. I have to change gears often. So, to be truthful, I listen to lots of classic rock. Maybe yacht rock.

Ron: Same here. I listen to all sorts of things. Since I teach guitar, I have to learn and play all different kinds of music. Some of the newer/current guitarists and bands are doing some really creative things, I just wish there was more focus on bands rather than all of these individual accolades, especially with guitarists. I recently saw Entheos live and they blew my socks off.

Doug: I’m all over the place with the music I listen to. There are good songwriters and good musicians in every genre and it just depends on whatever mood I’m in. Sometimes it’s stuff I grew up with like Rush, sometimes it’s newer bands like Knower.

Being in and out of a band for decades I’m sure you’ve accumulated a handful of stories from the studio and on the road: any favorites?

Jason: Well, stories, I don’t know where to start, or how interesting they would be, and another way to say that would be, wait for my book!  I have learned about how to perform, record and write and teach music, from all of my experiences. Getting to work with some of the people I looked up to growing up, has been a cool trip and an honor.

Ron: That’s a loaded question but I guess a highlight (lowlight) for me was on the WatchTower European tour in ’90 we had a few gigs where we played in our underwear. The gig in Rotterdam is online. Another lowlight was my knee going out of place twice at my 3^rd WatchTower gig.  

Doug: A particular show that stands out for me was a show we played in Dortmund, Germany as we were finishing up recording Control and Resistance in Berlin. It seemed like everyone we met had driven a long distance to see us, mostly only knowing our music from the tape-trading scene. It was really mind-blowing to us that anyone even knew who we were, just some random band from Texas that had never been overseas before.

You guys have been a band for quite a while, and prog metal’s fanbase is more diverse than it’s ever been thanks to the internet. How do you view prog metal’s developments over the years—from Dream Theater to djent to whatever Polyphia’s doing, the genre has undoubtedly diversified. How do you view the development of progressive metal and of music in general?

Jason: Honestly, I feel a bit out of touch. Polyphia is incredible, and the fact that they came from something…what was that? I feel that the most barbaric thrash, or the sludgiest dirge metal, comes from something else. When it was created by a small group of players coming together to make noises that fit together so well is freaky and beautiful. So, It has to be my honest answer, that mind bending specifics of the genre, of what mean progressive, I am at a loss these days. Meaning, I just cannot keep up with the proggers!

Ron: Well, it’s definitely changing. I guess that would happen over a number of decades. Again, due to the internet I think there’s too much individualism happening. Some of these top players on the net aren’t even in bands, and that’s what it used to be all about.

Doug: Like Jason, I’m probably a little out of touch with all the latest hot prog bands, but I know I’ve heard some pretty crazy and impressive music over the years. There are some phenomenal young musicians and bands in the scene.

This one’s for Ron, but I’m curious what his musical background is to perform how he did in 1989 on Control and Resistance and then a few years later on legendary releases with Spastic Ink and Blotted Science. I’d also love to hear from the man himself if he can elaborate on how he has such a unique style in metal: any song with Ron is instantly recognizable. What’s the secret behind the tone? I also know he builds his own guitars: does he view himself as a tinkerer of a guitarist? What’s your process with regards to building your own instruments? 

Ron: Most of the stuff that I’ve written over the past few decades has been focused around writing with 12 note systems. I even have a few apps out that set up rows and progressions using all 12 notes and create backing tracks. I’m writing a book right now on my 12-note technique writing, hopefully done by the end of the year. As far as building my own guitars, I just got tired of playing the same shaped guitars that too many players play, and came up with my own design and specs. Would be cool to have my own line of guitars one of these days, but no sign of that as of yet.  

You all were not only the most technical and progressive metal ever at the point of your debut, and you were also mostly teenagers! Did Watchtower have aspirations/expectations on being career musicians or was your success a surprise?

Jason: It is [not] always easy to recall our plan, because I do not remember having one at all. Speaking for myself, I was so happy to just play loud music with people I adored, who were as happy as I was just rehearsing the same songs over and over. It did not even matter if it was a cover song, or an older original piece, or something we had just come up with. Just to be creating sound, creating something from nothing, by banging on wood and wire, was and still is, the attraction.

Ron: I think I’ve always wanted to be a career musician, but more of an artist who creates releases based on concepts, and evolving from album to album. That’s mostly due to Rush, who with every album went in a different direction. Spastic Ink was set up to have more albums based on the ‘Ink Complete’ and ‘Ink Compatible’ concept. Blotted Science was also set up with ‘The Machinations Of Dementia’ and ‘The Animation Of Entomology’. Too bad both projects lasted only two albums. I had so many more ideas for concepts that just never happened.

Doug: Honestly, I don’t think we thought super far ahead as teenagers, but it just seemed like something we’d keep doing since it was such a big part of our lives.  

Rick: I can’t say I ever really had a plan, beyond playing more gigs and keeping the momentum going as much as possible. Being a “path of least resistance” (pun intended) kind of person, and without any specific goals for the band or for myself musically, I never really had any big dreams. Just plugging away and enjoying the experience was enough. As I got older I realized that I wasn’t driven to become a career musician, being more of a dabbler than a serious student of the art.

How early did each of you pick up your chosen instruments given your abundant skill at such an early age?

Jason: I got my first bass guitar at age 12. As early as age 9, I was figuring out some scales on an old stand up piano. I never applied much of my discovery, until much later. I am still discovering. 

Ron: My first instrument was piano, which I took up in 2^nd grade. I switched to guitar a few years later when some football friends said that guitar was a much cooler instrument. My mom was kinda pissed about it, but she did get me a Les Paul and a practice amp. I had a few guitar lessons playing ‘Old Grey Goose’ and ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’,  but dropped them and started figuring out KISS songs.

Doug: My first instrument was violin which I played for a couple of years in middle school orchestra, but I wasn’t really serious about it. I started playing guitar around 8^th or 9^th grade and just jammed with other kids in my neighborhood. I knew Rick from those circles. When we met Billy [Billy White, guitarist from 1982-86], the original plan was to have Billy and me switching off between guitar and bass. But once I started learning a few bass lines, I immediately gravitated towards that instrument and realized my musical brain was more suited to bass, so Billy became our full-time guitarist, LOL. 

Rick: I joined my 6th grade school band as a means to get out of class one day, and when the band director asked each of us what instrument we wanted to play, I didn’t have a clue, so I blurted out “drums”. Turned out I kinda had a knack for it, so I kept going with it throughout middle and high school. It wasn’t until I heard “Cygnus X-1” when I was a freshman in high school that I really got excited about playing drums. It was the early Peart influence that set the initial direction of my style.

For Rick and Doug, how did your approach to songwriting changed between Energetic Disassembly and Control and Resistance? And then—probably more substantially—how did your songwriting develop over the decades? When you look back at the first two albums, is there anything you wish you’d done differently (we wouldn’t change a thing!)?

Doug: Some of the songs that ended up on Control and Resistance were written even before we recorded Energetic Disassembly, but the batch of songs on Energetic were from a slightly earlier period of our songwriting and seemed to fit together. There were a lot of songs from before the Energetic era that didn’t make the cut and were only recorded as demos or not at all. Many were part of our live setlist after we wrote them but eventually dropped off for newer songs that we liked more. When Ron joined the band, he was driving up to Austin from San Antonio so we had to be a little more efficient with writing, although there was quite a bit of bouncing ideas off each other. Probably the thing I would go back and change if a time machine existed would be the sound production on both records.

Rick: On Energetic, for me it was about playing fast and aggressive all the time, with lots of Peart style fills. That evolved somewhat as we continued writing for Control. I became less interested in just slamming out fast stuff, and more interested in writing and playing parts that had unique interplay with the rest of the instruments as well as leaving more space. In hindsight I wish that I had been more discriminating in the studio on both recordings. I really dislike recording so if it was half-ass decent I’d let it go just so I could move on to the next song. I guess you could say I’m an imperfectionist. 

There seems to be some discrepancy with the release date of Energetic Disassembly, and it’s important, not only because we’re nerds about cataloging release dates, but also because there’s a friendly rivalry between you and Fates Warning over having the “first” ever prog metal album. I’ve heard November 84, February 85, and November 85. Which is the real one?

Jason: I recall being in the studio (Cedar Creek, South Austin, TX) finishing up things in Nov. of 1984 and by October we were having a release party. Then I see it listed as a January 1985 official release because that is when our distributors had received the product and had put it in line at stores. November 1984 sounds a little bit early for us to call it an official release. We did have a cassette tape we shipped out all over the place with MELTDOWN and TYRANTS IN DISTRESS on it, because those were recorded first and in a different studio, engineered and mixed by Kerry Krafton. That is where the Nov. ‘84 timeline comes in.

You haven’t rested on your laurels and have been busy in various projects since the 80s. What are some of your favorites? I know several of us here particularly love Blotted Science and Howling Sycamore. Do these bands speak to a desire to play several styles of music? Does your Watchtower experience come out when composing for other projects?

Jason: I make it no secret that my earliest years in WatchTower were like school for me, as a full musician, a writer, a composer, all of it. All of it started with those guys. I find that composing and working with other artists, collaborations, has also shown me there is not one way to write a song. Any style of song, I can learn something. These guys showed me how to appreciate that part of music. And. I loved working with Davide Tiso and HOWLING SYCAMORE, a total blast singing those incredible songs. Davide let me just soar all over, anything I wanted to sing melody wise. His music and lyrics were a breath of fresh air for music. And for myself.

Ron: I do get involved in other projects, but they all pretty much center around proggy/tech rock/metal. Blotted Science was different for me because I wanted to get a lot heavier (blastbeats, drop A tuning, etc…) but Spastic Ink and my solo material is similar to WatchTower musically, it’s just more structured. When I write with WatchTower it’s different than other projects because it’s usually face to face bouncing ideas off of Doug and Rick, so musically everybody makes contributions whereas with Blotted Science it’s all long distance writing via emails and mp3s. It’s collaborative but just not the same as live interaction. The Blotted Science guys were never in the same room until 8 months after Machinations was released. I am currently working on another solo CD, which is a follow-up to my 2^nd solo CD Solitarily Speaking Of Theoretical Confinement.

Doug: After WatchTower went into hiatus after Control and Resistance, I was asked to join a funk/rock/rap band called Retarted Elf that traveled around the region and had a decent following. It was a completely different style of music, but when I started writing with them, there were certainly some things that carried over from my experiences with WatchTower.

Our site’s focus is underground progressive metal—who are some smaller bands you want to shout out? Friends, bands in the local scene, people who have opened for you, etc! We (and our readers) want them all!

Jason: I have not done a whole lot with these guys, as far as playing shows, I guested on a song on one of their releases, and would like to mention VESPERIAN SORROW. I do not know what kind of music it really is, but it is over the top. It skips over lots of genres, from symphonic proggy death metal [to] soundtrack music, with incredible musicianship that holds up against anyone. They are from around here in central Texas. Please look them up.

Ron: I don’t really have a Spotify and Apple account so I only hear what is on the net while I’m browsing around, or what students may bring in. As I mentioned before, most of what I see online is lots of guitarists doing their own thing, and not a lot of them are in bands. 

Doug: I’m a little out of touch with who are the latest hot bands, but I know I hear some pretty great stuff come up randomly through the algorithm on my music app.

Stick with me for a hypothetical. You’re packing your luggage to leave home for a tour from Texas, and you see a scorpion in your luggage. What are you doing? (I’m begging for advice as this recently happened to me in Tucson, and I haven’t opened my luggage since).

Jason: Immediately spot the creature, use a handheld vacuum cleaner to suck up the creature. It should not harm the creature too badly, then empty the chamber outside, a ways from your house.

Ron: I’d start singing ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’ and see if it responds. If it’s a beetle, I usually sing “She Loves You yeah, yeah, yeah.” Yes, that has happened before. No it didn’t respond.

Doug: Scorpion venom is one of the most valuable and expensive liquids on the planet, but I don’t think I’d be able to figure out how to extract it safely. Instead, I’d name the scorpion Uli.

Rick: Brush it away and let it go. Or stomp on it. I live in a rural environment and have been stung by scorpions many times, it’s a non event. Less painful than a fire ant bite.

Finally, when is Concepts of Math, Book II, are you doing the classic prog trope of titling a suite Part 1 and leaving out its sequel? ;).

I’m sure you’ve heard about the WatchTower album Mathematics that never happened. Well, that Concepts of Math EP is 5 of the 11 songs that were supposed to be on the full album. Will we ever get those last 6 songs recorded? Probably not. But if we ever did, I’d think that we’d put all 11 songs together as they were planned, with each first letter of each song title spelling out MATHEMATICS. Releasing a book 2 or part 2 just destroys the whole concept. 

Our thanks to Jason, Ron, Doug, and Rick for their time. All of us here at the Subway look forward to future projects of yours, WatchTower or otherwise!

Links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

The post Interview: WatchTower appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Q: Hello, Papangu, long time no see! It’s an important time for you guys as you’re now releasing your sophomore album after such an explosive debut! I know there are so many people excited to hear Lampião Rei, and I’m lucky enough to have given it a few spins already and ask you the questions the world needs to hear. How have you all been since we last spoke?

Hector: Pretty busy! We’ve been touring, rehearsing and composing a lot. Since Holoceno was released we’ve toured Brazil twice – got ourselves into some cool gigs, including festivals. Also worth mentioning the upcoming (October 20th) Knotfest Brasil gig, which will be our first time playing in a stadium. We managed to write some songs for future stuff and other projects that we cannot disclose right now. So pretty busy overall, I’d say. We’re having a blast. We’re all very happy with everything that has happened since Holoceno debuted but we’re also very confident and very proud of  Lampião Rei. Cannot wait for everyone to hear it.

Marco: Working our asses off, both in the band and in our own professional/academic lives! So far, it’s been paying off. We’ve grown a lot as a band, too, and learned so much from touring Brazil and recording Lampião Rei.

Q: Having given Lampi​ã​o Rei a few listens now, it’s evident you upped the zeuhlishness compared to Holoceno, both the prog rock and jazz influences are on wide display. With the changes in style on this album, were there any particular bands who influenced the musical direction you took for Lampi​ã​o Rei?

Hector: I don’t think that any particular band or artist influenced the musical direction but rather our own collective and conscious decision to create a different work of art. Some of the very first talks me and Marco had about the sophomore album were around the topic of moving the band forward, musically speaking. We know that Holoceno brought the band from nothing to where we are today, but we just couldn’t write the same record again. It wouldn’t be honest or genuine, and that’s my favorite kind of music: the kind of which the listener can actually feel that the music represents what the artist wanted to do. Having said that, I was listening to Cátia de França a lot when we were writing the first pieces. I remember Marco was very much into Edu Lobo.

Marco: I think the musical influences here are much more subtle than what we channeled in Holoceno. If the album sounds more like zeuhl and prog rock it’s just because we’ve gotten confident playing challenging parts live together. A good reason why old Yes and Magma records sound like that is because they were doing things live in the same room, and we wanted to channel that method of classic bands, rather than try to mimic their riffs, patterns, or song structures. Lampião Rei really is how we sounded playing together in that studio, rather than the DIY bedroom wall-of-sound approach to metal that permeated Holoceno’s production. For example, instead of DI guitars and bass through Joyo pedals straight into a cheap audio interface, here you can hear us playing real tube amps through actual speakers through good microphones into great preamps. A proper studio album, with few takes and no bullshitting, so we were really trying to do a record like it was done in the old days without messing up the real sound we got in the studio rooms. 

Rodolfo: I reckon I was more influenced by textures, timbres, and instruments rather than harmonies, melodies, or rhythms. I was indeed influenced by Papangu itself. Having played dozens of gigs with my brothers between late 2022 and mid 2024, I truly welcomed the chance to play metal and prog again, having spent years in the jazz and blues scene. It’s definitely a two-way road.

Q: A couple of us at the blog are huge fans of Brazilian folk music, so we’re excited to hear all the forró, maracatu, and samba influences shine through even brighter. Clearly you guys have a huge passion for your regional scene. There are torchbearers like Angra and Sepultura, of course, and other contemporaries like blog-favorite Kaatayra, but Papangu feels so natural! How naturally do you find incorporating Brazilian musical influences into metal? Do several of you have extensive backgrounds outside of metal and even prog?

Hector: First of all, so cool to hear you guys dig that kind of stuff! But yeah, it actually feels very natural for us. It’s not something that we try to force or display as a gimmick to our sound, and I think it shows. As I said in the last question, I appreciate genuine and heartfelt music, regardless of genre or style. When it comes to backgrounds outside of rock n roll, the fact that Vitor plays drums for us but also for a thrash/death metal band and also plays zabumba and triangle for a forró trio, it’s a very good example of how we naturally shift between these influences. Rodolfo played keys for years in a forró group. I was raised on both The Beatles and this amazing band called Mestre Ambrósio (countrymen and contemporaries to Nação Zumbi) that features traditional northeastern Brazilian sounds with a modern twist. And when it comes the time to write songs, we just let it all flow in the most natural and beautifully intertwined way we can. It’s music without borders or prejudice. 

Rodolfo: We are from the Northeast. It’s nearly impossible to go past May, June, and July without being overwhelmed by the region’s traditional music, namely forró—which is both at the background and foreground of the several festivals and parties taking place around this time. I’ve listened to and played forró nearly all my life. It’s second nature. While I’ve played metal and prog for many years, I also had the chance to tour extensively with a septet that played traditional forró. However, I made a point of using only vintage instruments at the time: Hammond organs, Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzers, and Moog sounds. 
Marco: I had a small stint playing electric bass in a student jazz big band and studied double bass very sloppily for five or so years. Anyhow, I listen to very little metal – I’m usually thinking of Brazilian music, jazz-rock records, or classical composers I dig, like Messiaen, Dutilleux, and Ravel whenever I’m composing. Now that we’re better equipped to mess with a broader palette of both instruments and musical language, I think it’s natural that we want to try bringing these influences a little closer into the mix. We’re still gonna keep making loud and heavy music, though.

Q: Also, welcome to the band Vitor, Rodolfo, and Pedro! As the newest members of one of my favorite underground projects, how have you been involved in the creation of the new album? Each of you bring various strengths to the band, and I’m excited to hear about what aspects you guys feel you add to the sound underneath the surface of your awesome performances. 

Rodolfo: Keyboards play a significant part in lots of 70s prog music. It seems to me that bringing the keys to the spotlight with a full-time keyboardist definitely highlights a less subtle prog rock influence. Still, I’ve always let those blues licks escape whenever people are not looking, so there’s that. Finally, I’m yet to fathom a world without thunderous, lightspeed lead synth arpeggios. Shame on me. I’m also happy to sing and contribute to vocal harmonies and arrangements throughout Lampião Rei. My contributions have always been welcomed by the founding members—”Maracutaia”’s release is the epitome of this burgeoning relationship.

Pedro: Thank you for welcoming us! It’s very nice to be part of Papangu. I feel both my skills as an arranger as well as a composer were improved during the production and recording of Lampião Rei. I’m used to being part of projects that are jazz-oriented, so my music is mainly in the fields of Brazilian instrumental music. Prog and classic rock music also played a very important role in my life, so having all that melt together within genres I was not as familiar with, such as zeuhl, grindcore, sludge and stoner-rock, was and still is a pretty challenging and wonderful experience!

Q: The concept of the album was inspired by the historical life of Virgulino Ferreira da Silva. Looking into his life, he seemed to be a very morally gray figure, being both a symbol of honor and piety as he was a rampant murderer. I’m curious what drew you all toward Ferreira as a central figure. What is the message of the story you’re trying to tell?

Marco: As far as I know, Lampião has almost always been regarded as this brave mythical entity in Brazilian history. He’s a polarizing figure whose life story isn’t really consistently interpreted for what it is: a sad story of someone shaped by unfair circumstances that derived from consistent oppression and inequality.

For example, there’s a local big-mouth far right politician who was named after Lampião and wears that name on his sleeve, misusing the historical weight behind Virgulino’s circumstances and promoting a pro-police violence message that does well with conservatives. The thing is that Lampião’s father was unlawfully murdered by a police officer when he was a teenager. Lampião was not an angel himself, but he and his crew were summarily executed by police forces in 1938, and their bodies were subjected to the grimmest sort of public humiliation you could imagine. They were decapitated and had their heads exposed on a town square for a week. Later, they were sent off to labs so that phrenologists could draw up outrageous, racist conclusions of how these people – either native Brazilians, descendants of slaves, or multiracial – would be destined to become criminals. That discourse played well to mask the true reason why people went into a life of crime: suffering under heavy and ruthless systems of inequality and injustice. 

Adding insult to injury, former Brazilian president [Jair] Bolsonaro also tried to cash in on using the Cangaço movement’s imagery in his favor, posing for photos using traditional cangaceiro headwear, like the sort of stuff Lampião had worn. This whole thing about claiming to be an underdog – when you’re obviously not – and using these symbols to say you’re a brave fucking guy who’s fighting evil against all odds when you’re embodying and supporting illegal state violence also warranted a response from the arts. Now I know indie bands are not a relevant force in politics at all, but the people who listen to our music are likely voters. Better to use our medium to spread a good message than to be a politically aseptic act that’s afraid of polarizing listeners. 

But I digress. Our record’s story aims to reject that misinterpretation of Lampião’s life entirely, and attempts to ressignify his “myth” through a different lens. Still distorted, because this is after all a concept album, not a thesis, but we’re using allegories and other storytelling methods to circumvent the “Hell yeah! I’m a goddamn macho!” idea and instead present the tragedy of a people’s response to being left to rot by the state, to being mercilessly and extrajudicially hunted down by the police forces, and to being drained of money and life by the remnants of the slavery system – which I remind you, only officially ended in Brazil in the year 1888, merely ten years before Lampião was born. 

Also, there’s a whole gamma of aesthetic elements that drew us to this subject. Lampião and his crew were absolute dandies – actual adepts of dandyism – who designed and tailored their unique flashy garments, sang beautiful songs, loved expensive French cologne, were deeply immersed in Afro-Brazilian religious syncretism, and committed acts of Robin Hood-style robberies to give some money back to poor citizens. They lived a life of spiritual glamor in the unforgiving backlands of one of the most beautiful parts of the world. How can you not want to write a record about that? 

There’s a lot more to the story that we’d prefer not to disclose, though. An attentive listener who reads through the lyrics carefully might be able to unravel a lot of things.

Q: You had mentioned previously that a majority of the compositions on Holoceno were taken from years of jam sessions from your original group of friends. Did Lampi​ã​o Rei go through a similar songwriting process? With the increased jazz-influence, I imagine there is a natural bridge between improvisation and composition in your sound.

Marco: Sort of. I cannot speak for how Rodolfo and Pedro composed their pieces for this record (“Maracutaia” was written by Rodolfo and features one riff I wrote, while both “Sol Raiar” and “Ruínas” were composed by Pedro alone), but I tend to compose by bringing myself to a state of stream of consciousness. Sometimes that happens when I try out ideas on the guitar by myself (“Acende a Luz Pt. III”, “Rito de Coroação”, most of “Oferenda no Alguidar”) or when we sit down together to bounce off riffs and melodies and flesh out the harmony – which is how the first two parts of “Acende a Luz” and most of “Boitatá” came to life. 

Rather, improvisation’s role in shaping this record’s sound came naturally from having the band heavily rehearse and play these pieces live, slowly fermenting the base arrangements into something else. Now that we’ve fully transitioned back into being a live band, I think the next Papangu records will benefit a lot more from what we’re learning from playing and improvising together – but Lampião Rei is still somewhat rooted in similar compositional methods to the ones we used for Holoceno. Who knows, it might be a transitional record after all, but it’s one we’re incredibly proud of. 

Rodolfo: I tend not to think much about how songs come about. They mostly appear when I’m fiddling with the piano. With regard to arrangements and the increased jazz influence, ideas came during rehearsals alongside the band. We worked a lot on dynamics and ins and outs—what each one is doing while the other has the spotlight. Regarding the interaction between writing and improvising, Lampião Rei has lots of solos, which speaks volumes of our need to vent that creativity. But I’d say most improvisation within the band happens live, when we allow ourselves to shape form and matter for basically every song in the set.

Pedro: Because of my background in jazz and Brazilian instrumental music, I tend to leave room for improvisation in the composition. This is a quality present in the music of Moacir Santos, Egberto Gismonti and Hermeto Pascoal, very inspiring figures that have successfully mixed a diversity of genres within their music. In Ruínas, those influences are very clear, as well as some traces of Frank Zappa and Gentle Giant. Sol Raiar, written in partnership with Marco, has some echoes from Cátia de França’s classic album 20 Palavras Girando Ao Redor do Sol, and Dominguinhos’ Domingo, Menino Dominguinhos. Both records are within the genres and subgenres of forró music (coco, xote, toada), but they feature a lot of the Rhodes keyboard, electric guitars and have a pinch of jazz and/or rock music.

Q: Now that you’ve been around for a few years, I’m sure you’ve made a lot of friends in the music world. Are there any bands from your local scene that you want to recommend or particularly enjoy playing live with? Any from the wider music world? 

Marco: I’ve been living in Berlin, Germany for a couple years now, and had the pleasure to meet many musicians I admired and, in some cases, become friends with some of them, including some of the people in Norwegian bands: Sex Magick Wizards, Full Earth, I Like to Sleep, and Kanaan; plus German bands SEK, Weite, and Gaffa Ghandi. You probably know about Italian death metal avant-gardists Ad Nauseam, too, but I double recommend them. 

Hector: Make sure to check our hometown friends and weirdos from Tela Azzu, for sure. Also hailing from our hometown, check out the deep beats and nasty grooves from Chico Correa and his awesome project called Berra Boi. Then there’s our friends in Test for some crazy and experimental grindcore. If you want in-your-face-godzilla-rampaging-through-a-city grindcore, give Facada a listen. If you want some Converge-inspired metal/hardcore, here’s Institution. If you like fast, feminist and female-fronted crossover/thrash, here’s Eskröta. They’re all very different bands within different genres of music, but they’re all good friends with us.

Rodolfo: I second my peers’ recommendations, and would just like to add that we’ve collaborated live a few times with a dear friend of ours, the French saxophonist Benoit Crauste. While he’s not from the local scene, his Brazilian influence and dedication to studying and playing Hermeto Pascoal really shows in his songs and live performance. We’ve also had a brilliant feature in our new album, a local performer, songwriter, and icon in the avant garde music from Paraíba, namely Paulo Ró.  
Pedro: Shout out to Alamiré, a group from our hometown that mixes african rhythms, jazz, rock and Brazilian music all together in a very authentic way. Also, to another neighbor of ours, Lucas Gaião (singer, composer, guitarist, arranger), a very sensitive artist who reflects a lot of Brazilian-northeastern rhythms in his style of songwriting.

Q: To finish things off, what can we expect from you in the future? Do you have any behind the scenes snippets for our readers?

Marco: We’ve just been welcomed into Atonal Music Agency’s roster, who will be representing us for bookings in Europe and the UK. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited to play our first concerts outside of Brazil! Though our fanbase in Brazil has been growing quite a lot in the past two years, our biggest audience seems to be in Europe and the US, so that should be pretty damn cool, as I truly believe the best way to experience our music is by seeing us play live. The arrangements really come out of the frame and bite you in the face.

We’re also getting back into writing more material for our next recordings, and have a couple of collaborations in the works. 

Behind the scenes, I can tell you that Acende a Luz Pt. III, which is probably the most technically demanding piece on Lampião Rei, was recorded without us counting the time signatures. We came up with a mnemonic poem to remember the ever-changing patterns that is essentially a short story about a marmoset smoking a doobie. Being in a band is fun! 

Thank you to Papangu for indulging us! 

Lampião Rei releases on 6 September 2024.

Links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

The post Interview: Papangu appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Before we jump in, it’s worth noting that between the questions being sent out and receiving the reply, In Vain have experienced two sudden and unfortunate line-up changes. Founding member and vocalist Andreas Frigstad announced that he would be leaving the band, while founding member, vocalist and keyboardist Sindre Nedland announced that he’s taking a break from the band whilst he undergoes treatment for cancer. We at The Progressive Subway wish Sindre all the best in his treatment as well as a speedy recovery, and all the best to Andreas in his future endeavours.

Hey Johnar, how’s it going? How are things in the fjords of Norway? 

Hey there! All is well here. Summer seems to be coming to an end though, would have liked it to continue a bit longer. And the weather has not exactly been great. Hope all is well on your side.

I’m doing well, thanks! Solemn, your fifth album, released a couple of months ago now. How has the response been and how does it feel to see another album come to completion and finally reach listeners?

It has been a very long process and we are happy to finally come to the end. To create an album of one hour takes a shitload of time, to be honest. That said, we are very pleased with the final results. As a bonus, fans and the public seem to enjoy it as well, and the reviews have been absolutely amazing. We did not necessarily make it easier for ourselves with the long wait, and we certainly feel that the expectations get raised for every album, which obviously makes it a lot harder to surpass them. 

The word “Solemn” sets certain expectations about an album’s tone, but Solemn actually has a range of emotional flavours, from warmer tracks like “Where the Winds Meet” to defiant anthems like “Blood Makes the Grass Grow”. Can you tell us a bit about the overarching lyrical themes of the album and the ideas that underlie these tonal shifts?

When you have music as diverse as ours, it is hard to find an album title that encompasses everything. On previous albums, Andreas and I had written the lyrics, whilst on Solemn, Sindre contributed the lyrics for four songs and I wrote the rest. We have no general theme for the lyrics, but we touch upon topics such as personal experiences, life’s ups and downs, nature, the mystery of the human mind and soul, etc. We try to write lyrics with meaning, but that also fit the music. Our lyrics can have a dark or melancholic aura to them, but I also think many would find them uplifting.

On Solemn, you also utilise a lot of brass and woodwind accompaniment, from the more relaxed sax solo on “Season of Unrest” (before the explosion into raucousness) to the enormous brass section on “Eternal Waves”. In lesser hands, those sections could come off as gimmicky and might not integrate with the overall style but you make them work superbly. How do you go about incorporating these instruments in a way that fits so naturally into the intensity of melodic death metal, and what makes you feel a particular track could use the addition of such non-standard instruments?

Thanks for those kind words. We are very careful to not add instruments from outside the band for gimmicky reasons, as you say. It needs to add value to the music and not turn it into sonic chaos. Since our very first releases, we have utilized horns and brass. In my personal opinion, a horn section adds a very nice flavour and contrast, without going completely overboard with a full blown orchestra, which I find a bit too much. When it comes to saxophone, that’s also something we have used on several songs in the past, for the first time on our second EP [Wounds] from 2005; you can check out the song “In Remembrance”, I actually think it has one of the best saxophone sections we have ever had. I have to admit, having a sax part on every album has kind of become a tradition for us. When it comes to incorporating these instruments, we typically find parts where they would add value to the music during the composition or pre-production phase. A lot of this has to do with experience and it always comes naturally, it is not like a “we need to create a riff where we can have horns” type of approach. 

Yourself, Sindre and Andreas have been with the band since the start. When you look back, how has the band experience changed over the last 21 years, from recording and releasing to touring and reaching fans? 

Well, we just announced that Andreas is stepping down from the band. He simply does not have enough motivation to continue. I guess we have become more professional and experienced, especially on the live front. We have invested in both sound and light gear to make the live shows better, and our drummer Tobias in particular has a very good grasp on those things. When it comes to being in a band for over twenty years, I think the most fun we had was during the recording of our first EPs and albums; I find it harder to compose music these days to be honest. Also, it was a great experience to have Jens Bogren mix our music for the first time, which happened on Ænigma (2013). I have always enjoyed touring and meeting fans and seeing new places. That is a great bonus from being in a band.

You take your time crafting your albums, and it’s been six years since Currents released. How does the writing process work for you guys, and did you face any challenges while recording Solemn? 

It is important for me to note that the composition process has not been six years. Typically, after the release of a new album, as the sole composer I take a break from composing music, as it’s quite intensive and hard work. The album was finished and mastered in September 2022. It was delayed intentionally because we did not want to release an album in the middle of Covid and not be able to support it live. In addition, there were quite big delays and queues on the printing of vinyl. Covid impacted the album in the way that we had more time to tweak the songs during the pre-production.

In Vain are probably best categorised as “melodic death metal”. Who are the groups that have inspired your sound?

I can only speak for myself here, but I enjoy music from all genres. That said, I prefer artists that have a unique sound or some form of identity in their music. I try to learn from those artists and incorporate what I view as their strengths into my own music, while still creating something new and not simply copying others. If we stick to metal here, for me there is no doubt that Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth is the best songwriter of all time in metal. He is in a league of his own. Then you have other bands like Emperor, Extol and In the Woods. I also think Gorguts and Ulcerate are bands with unique identities. 

Solemn sounds absolutely fantastic and, as with your two previous albums, it was mixed and mastered at Fascination Street Studios, by Jens Bogren and Tony Lindgren, who have become one of the biggest studios for progressive metal in particular. As musicians, what is it about Fascination Street Studios that keeps you coming back and what’s the production process like on your end?

Thanks a lot for those kind words. To be honest, we are not really up to date on what studios are out there. That said, we really like working with Jens and we know he understands what we are after. I think he is able to mix the best of the vintage and the modern world when it comes to recording and mixing. This time around we wanted a big grandiose sound and Jens delivered the best production we have ever had.

A more technical question from one of our writers, Cooper, who asks: “how do you achieve such a rich and warm guitar tone without using much gain? I’m thinking particularly of moments such as 3:56 in “Shadows Flap Their Black Wings” and 2:37 in “At the Going Down of the Sun”.

As we have gotten older, and hopefully wiser, we have dialled down the gain more and more. Less gain makes it more heavy in our opinion, rather than the opposite. More gain typically takes away a lot of detail, something that does not work with our music. You can have a high gain guitar tone if you play one string or simple chord riffs, but that is not what we do. When you record an album, the guitars are dubbed and there are obviously other mixing tricks that can be done to make stuff sound bigger. It is not possible to recreate all of this live and you might want a slightly different guitar sound live than in a studio. 

And another question on the writing process from another of our reviewers, Zach, who asks: “Once you’ve written a riff or progression that you’re happy with, how do you go about developing it and structuring it within a song, connecting it to other riffs and growing that initial idea into a full track?”

I have always written music in my head, and by that I mean that I am not using the guitar to jam in order to create riffs. What I find more important than riffs is how you arrange the song. I believe you can have a great track, that might have some subpar riffs, as long as it is arranged in a smart way. In fact, putting in some subpar riffs in there might make the good riffs stand out more. Another key point for us, as a band who mix a lot of different styles in our music, is to have good transition riffs. If you want to create songs with many different elements and genres you have to make sure that the transitions between the various parts are smooth; if not you will end up with chaos. In songwriting, I have always trusted my gut feeling, if I do not have the right gut feeling I know there is something I have to change.

We’re big fans of Subterranean Masquerade here, so it was a pleasure to hear Davidavi “Vidi” Dolev provide vocals on the epic closer “Watch For Me On the Mountain”. What attracted you to Vidi as a vocalist and how did the idea for collaborating with him on this huge, emotional choral finale come about? 

We had the pleasure of touring with Subterranean Masquerade in 2018 and they are a great band and a lovely bunch of people! Vidi is a fantastic singer who masters a lot of different vocals. We already had the vocal lines ready for this song, but somehow Sindre singing did not feel right. We reached out to Vidi and we think he elevated this song to the next level! 

Which bands/albums have you been enjoying lately? And are there any underground bands you’re enjoying and think deserve more attention?

I have been digging into the Ulcerate albums lately. When it comes to underground bands, I think Mare Cognitum deserves more attention.

John, Paul, George and Ringo of The Beatles were known as the smart one, the cute one, the quiet one and the funny one. What are you guys known as?

Kjetil – The quiet one
Alexander – The vigorous one
Tobias – The handy one
Sindre – The happy one
Johnar – The smart one

Solemn is a fantastic record which we’ve all really enjoyed here at The Progressive Subway. Thanks for taking part in this interview, Johnar, and thanks to everyone in In Vain for all the amazing music you’ve put out over the years. We wish you every success for the future!

Thanks a lot for your support!

Solemn was released on April 12th, 2024, on Indie Recordings.

Links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Metal-Archives Page

The post Interview: In Vain’s Johnar Håland appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Hello everyone, welcome to another interview from the prog metal underground! This time you will be joining me with Clément Darrieu (lead singer/guitarist and songwriter) and Henri (keyboards) from France’s own Altesia. You might know them from their critically acclaimed Paragon Circus which debuted in 2019. This album impressed the ears of many with its super progressive display of creative songwriting and elaborate, technical musicianship. This album is epic, melodic, and awe-inspiring but also so organic which makes it stand the test of time. Their sound has often been said to be a marriage between Haken’s quirky interludes and epic song structures, and Opeth’s dark atmosphere and memorable guitar sections. 

Altesia’s 2019 debut Paragon Circus is thematically about a Pandora’s Box type of scenario, opening up a can-of-worms, that cannot be stopped. This has its implications on where we are as a species, massive wealth inequality, rampant political corruption, destruction of the planet, possible technological singularities, etc. However, in their 2021 sophomore album: Embryo, the band illustrates more of an optimistic response to this gloomy future. There is a glint of hope for us to save ourselves through self-reflection, cleansing the mind of attachments to frivolous things, prioritizing our purposes in life, and developing love and empathy for others.

Hello Clément and the band of Altesia, thank you for joining us for this interview. I have been a fan of your work since your debut in 2019, and I am very impressed with your work in your 2021 sophomore output Embryo. I think it stays true to who you are as a band while changing up your approach enough not to be a rehash of Paragon Circus. Additionally, it is evident that you have grown a lot as a band in terms of the technical and melodic skill in your songwriting; you can now write longer songs, shorter more catchy songs, and in a more cohesive way. However, as an Opeth fan, I will say that I miss the growls. 

For our readers who have not yet listened to Altesia, how would you describe the band in your own words?

Clément: Hey Sebastian! First of all, I miss Opeth’s growls too! But it’s okay, we still have their old records, right? As for Altesia, we are a progressive metal band from France. For us, being “progressive” means we are free in the way we compose, we don’t try to fit within a particular genre and we love to experiment with different approaches, different styles, whether it is jazz, or pop, or djent, or funk or whatever!

To avid prog listeners, you wear your influences on your sleeve. How much do you guys balance conveying music that sounds like your influences and in curating your own sound with experimentation?

Clément: I guess we don’t try to sound like this or that band, even though, as you say, we have some identified influences. On our first album, “Paragon Circus”, maybe they were sometimes a bit too obvious with hindsight, so this time, I’ve opened myself to some new bands I didn’t know before, to try to add some new sounds to my palette. Also, this time, we spent a lot of time on the arrangements as a band, and I think each musician really worked hard to put his own touch to the songs. In the end, you can still feel our influences, but they are maybe more “digested”, and it sounds more personal and authentic.

Henri: My approach when arranging the songs is more about what ‘works’. I don’t think too much about if it sounds too much like so and so, or if it’s “me”, I focus more on if it serves the song. I listen to a wide variety of music, so I have a lot to pick from, and also with experience you start to realise nothing is ever ‘just you’, it comes from somewhere, experimentation is a process all musicians are part of collectively.

With “A Liar’s Oath” and “Mouth of the Sky”, Altesia has been exploring shorter and catchier tracks. What are some of the pros and cons in writing “singles” rather than longer, more experimental compositions?

Clément: Those two songs were written in that particular perspective: to be the two singles off the new album. So it was important, as you mention, to get some catchy choruses and shorter lengths. We made a lot of long songs in our first album “Paragon Circus”, so this time, I wanted to experiment with something different with shorter tracks. It’s a good format to promote a new record with a music video, and it’s also a way to put some fresh air into a show by adding a shorter track in-between two long songs. The biggest difficulty, to me at least, would be to try to make it sound “prog”, knowing that you won’t have a lot of time to develop your ideas, as making a single is the exact opposite of making long prog songs…

Not many progressive metal bands, both underground and in the mainstream, are able to write epic songs (Exit Initia and Cassandra’s Prophesy) that are as cohesive as Altesia’s. What bands do you most look towards as the golden standard for writing epic 15+ minute songs?

Clément : Definitely Haken. They remain one of my biggest influences when I start writing for Altesia, even though I try to detach myself from them, but that’s hard because I’ve been listening to them for such a long time! (Laughs). Their epics, to me, are always the best ones on their records. Though, I don’t try to make a Haken song when I compose. We share tricks and gimmicks I’d say, but I don’t try to sound like them when I compose an epic song or just a casual song. But yes indeed, not all prog bands manage to come up with really good long songs that keep you onboard for 15+ minutes! So it’s definitely a challenge, and we love that!

Henri: One of the most important things when writing such long songs is to have a progression, especially in terms of dynamics. That’s something that is very obvious in post-rock, for example, Mono has some songs that are like long crescendos. In “Exit Initia” we spent a lot of time working on the final part and the transition leading to it. We ended up with a long, dramatic build-up with a part somewhat inspired by the Requiem, that ends up exploding into the chorus. I think it’s stuff like that that makes it feel like an actual song and not just a juxtaposition of riffs and ideas.

Altesia social links:

Bandcamp

Official Website

Facebook

Instagram

Spotify

The post Interview: Altesia appeared first on The Progressive Subway.