Dead Rhetoric: You are active as much in person at shows as you are on social media – I’m curious to know your thoughts on building the profile of a band as a musician, do you believe that people think social media is the major promotion medium versus the older hand to hand, flyer passing, networking face to face methods of yesteryear?
Lopes: Unfortunately, like anything else there are pros and cons. I’ve had many meetings with marketing people about this. The internet is the way, there’s no way around it. At the core, it’s amazing- think about it. How else would you get your music to some dude in Japan so to speak? It’s not like I’m going to be going to Japan tomorrow and hand him a disc. All of a sudden we have some metal cats in Japan online, and I tell them to check this out. Instantly they can hear your band. On the other hand, it’s awesome to be able to go face to face and be able to hand them a physical product, but that’s limited. We are doing it around here, we socialize, and that’s important to build relationships on a personal basis. If you are cool, you can build similar relationships through social media.
Is it the be all and end all? Sadly, it kind of is. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram- all that stuff factors in. Labels can look at those things as a determining factor as to if a band is worth looking into. You have all these crazy algorithms that they look at. It’s pretty important- we live in a generation and society where everything is now on your phone. There is a little of both- and you have new obstacles where Facebook limits the amount of people you can invite to certain events, or how many people see your posts. Then I have people ask me why I post so many times a day. I tell them that every time I post, it goes to a different demographic of people that are on my friends list. If I have 5,000 friends, maybe a hundred see it, so every time I post 100 different people can see things. Paid ads are no different than what people used to pay for in print magazines. We had a meeting about this for PR- do I want to pay $1,500 to go with XYZ PR company who will put it in this magazine and that magazine- but who really reads in print magazines these days? Or put it on the Revolver website – it would cost us $2,000 to get on the front page, but how much traffic is going to the website? How about I target the people that are going to the website, and I’ll put an ad out to them? There are different ways of doing things, but you have to be smart about it.
Dead Rhetoric: Tell us three bands that you can’t go 24 hours without listening to – and the best concert that you’ve witnessed purely from a fan perspective and why did this stand out to you?
Lopes: Let’s see… I can’t go without listening to Iron Maiden, Katatonia. And a third band. I’m trying to see… I don’t know. That varies, sometimes it’s Moonspell, Death Angel. I do listen to a lot of Judas Priest, I find Halford’s style so inspiring. Best concert I’ve ever seen is Iron Maiden. I’ve seen them 34 times now and I don’t think I’ve ever seen them have a bad show. That’s so tough though, as I remember seeing Helloween on their last tour and that was killer.
Dead Rhetoric: What is in the works over the next year or so with Let Us Prey – shows, tours, additional recordings, videos?
Lopes: Actually that’s all being worked on. Right now we are working with Zeuss producing the next record. How that’s going to come out and where that’s going to come out, that’s being worked on right now. Tours… a lot of things are being determined right now, because the EP hasn’t officially been released. You have one of the only advanced copies of the disc- we put it out on line to get people to come out to the shows, there’s no other press yet. We have two conceptual videos in the works, one for “In Suffering” and “Above the Vaulted Sky”. I have grand visions. We are going to be doing a small run of shows with Nervosa in August, we are in talks to do a couple of runs with some local bands in the fall. Again it’s all pending with some of the deals we are going to do. I can tell you this for sure- the new record will be coming out early next year, and start recording it in the fall. We will be playing our asses off into infinity.
Dead Rhetoric: And will there be another Meliah Rage studio album, as you were the singer on their last album Warrior?
Lopes: That is the twenty-dollar question. It changes every week! (laughs) I want to do one. We want to do another record, it’s just a matter of getting it done. Whether it’s going to happen or not, it’s up in the air. I really hope it does, my personal feeling is they have one more record in them, and it needs to be the be all and end all record for them. They should not leave on Warrior as the last record- I’m proud of what we did, but the circumstances surrounding the making of it weren’t the best that it could have been. If done the way it can be done, they have one more Kill to Survive left in them. I’m all for it, I want to do it. Do some cool shows, a farewell tour, but they are a bunch of old guys.