Dead Rhetoric: The approach going into the songwriting for Sofia: What was it?
Moukid: Sofia is more melodic and a more prominent part was given to melodies and oriental moods. It would have been easy for us to compose a “Salam bis” but the particular context of this album has a real influence on the melancholic and darkness aspects of this album. Indeed, Sofia deals with the loss of someone. Therefore, it is more personal and filled with a heavy and melancholic atmosphere. And the whole writing process was influenced by the circumstances of this tragedy. Writing Sofia was a necessity, a visceral need: losing someone and tell her we love her. Being together around a single prayer has brought us a lot. We had all totally devoted ourselves to this project.
For the composing process, we needed to be together away from anything with just one thing to think about: playing music and writing our next album. Thus we found ourselves isolated, cut off from the outside world in a house in the deep Normandy for a week. The frame of the melodies and rhythmic parts have been created at this time. Moreover, I wrote most of the lyrics helped by the fact that we couldn’t be distracted by anything other than music. The goal was for us to reflect musically as closely as possible our feelings at this time. This special moment was a real turning point in the band’s life. The alchemy expected was created and gave birth to Sofia.
Dead Rhetoric: I must say, some of the vocal hooks across the album are some of Sarah’s best, like “Hayati,” “March of Sorrow” and “Deafening Silence.” What’s the key to finding the right vocal melody for her?
Moukid: Sarah’s vocals have indeed a dominating role in this album. The emotional atmosphere we wanted to create required limiting growls and giving more place to her clean vocals. The particular context of this album has a real influence on the melancholic and darkness aspects of this album. Sarah invests herself in this project as never. She puts considerable energy into interpretation, composition and adaptation of her vocal parts. Her voice is like an instrument even if it appeared late in the composition process. So she had the daunting task of subliming the instrumental parts already rich and expressive. Her emotion and her technical capabilities have enabled the album to reach a level of singing pretty amazing.
Dead Rhetoric: You’ve never shied away from tackling personal issues for your lyrics, and from what I understand, Sofia is a deeply personal matter. How did this shape the songwriting for the album?
Moukid: As you know now, Sofia deals with the loss of someone. In fact, it is a tribute to someone who deserved to live. If this event has affected only one of us, it has evoked for each of us something harrowing, intense or sad experienced in his own life. So what gave birth to Sofia is finally the heavy burden of sadness. I don’t really want to tell more because of this private matter. But I’m sure that everyone can understand how it’s difficult to live after a terrible loss. Knowing that no words can reach the friend, the brother, the mother that we lost. Our album is this letter, poem, last words to a close member of our family.
Dead Rhetoric: What are your thoughts on the various female-fronted metal bands that all look and/or sound the same? Do you care?
Moukid: I’m not totally aware of what female-fronted metal bands do because, to be honest, I can’t consider Arkan as such. We never thought about the musical direction of our metal parts with terms like “modern metal” or “dark metal.” No guidelines on how our next album will sound were fixed at the beginning of the composition process. We have for sole guideline to consolidate our individual musical backgrounds in order to serve a common goal. For Sofia, the emotion surrounding the writing process unconsciously directed to quite dark bands that have marked our youth like Paradise Lost, Opeth and Katatonia . But the evolution of our music to reach Sofia was really natural for us. However, it is true that Sarah’s vocals have a crucial role in this album. On the one hand, her voice symbolizes melancholy, sadness and grace. On the other, Florent’s growls represent anger, violence and darkness that a loss can bring away. Even they are more discreet, Florent’s growls proffer a real plus, this intense dimension Sofia called for. Their duality brings something Arkan had never proposed yet.
Dead Rhetoric: What do you think the biggest misconception about the band is? That because you have Middle Eastern influences, you automatically sound like Orphaned Land?
Moukid: Like Orphaned Land and Melechesh, the oriental musical roots of the band is the main source of our inspiration. The eastern side of our music is highlighted and therefore the link with Orphaned Land and Melechesh is obvious. There are so few bands which incorporate such influences into their music and Orphaned Land as well as Melechesh being pioneers in this field, the association with us is natural. Nevertheless, we are more inspired by European metal for all electrical parts and the music of North Africa and Andalusia for the acoustic parts. In all cases, the comparison with these bands affects us for the respect that inspires their career.
Dead Rhetoric: To that point, do you have difficulty describing the band to other people? (I usually use the oriental/Middle Eastern tag…which works.)
Moukid: We use the terms “oriental metal” because these words are usually used by others and we think that this formulation is easy to understand. The music of our origins, the Chaabi and Charqui, are music styles we listen from our earliest years. These music’s come from Maghreb. Most of us grew up with typical artists of North Africa. This kind of music have an important part in our musical background. The oriental music which influences our compositions is as vast as that of our influences in the metal sphere. It’s impossible for me to clearly tell you where one drum beat or one guitar riff come from. It is the same thing concerning the east side of our music which comes from the Middle East to North Africa and via Andalusian. For Sofia, we wanted all the oriental parts to be different and don’t bore the listener cause of redundancy. It was therefore important for us to draw our inspiration from the different spheres of oriental music. But I confess that when we compose we don’t question ourselves to know if a part sounds more Middle Eastern than North African. Labels don’t matter us, only the emotion generated by the music is, to our opinion, important.