…What I see in person is that hunger, to finally be back at shows. But also online, I see a lot of people who are very upset because they are afraid of this situation we live in. It’s understandable. I don’t blame people who really were looking forward to this, but can’t come. Dead Rhetoric: At the beginning of this year, there was talk of new music and being in the studio. How’s that coming along? Scissorhands: We are all done. By the end of this…
…of our band. I think I was referred to him by somebody else. We started an online relationship, predominately through Facebook Messenger. He is the only guy I’ve worked with in this capacity, he’s easy to talk to, clearly creative, and has tons of ideas. At the get go, when we weren’t really sure what we were looking for, we flipped through his portfolio and take notice of things – the way this looks, these colors working together. Specifically, f…
…you are playing in front of so you have some faces to see instead of these online only ones, some of which have come across quite cold and distant. Walmsley: You nailed it. That’s why we brought the crowd in, to give us something to play off. Since we are inviting friends, family, and really loyal fans locally that we have personally invited, it’s a way to say thank you to them as well for all the support. I’m looking forward to it. We haven’t pla…
…ehearse, tour, be a band, anything. We invented this event every Wednesday online, that we called Sepulquarta. We had a Q and A, open questions and chat with our fans, perform songs in the back catalog. We started playing the new material and then along the way we started playing the old stuff. And then we started calling friends to be with us and start jamming some of these songs together – also talk about different subjects outside of the music…
…feel about the final work? Thunder: It’s a Korean artist Noma that I found online. I saw his work on Instagram, he was the right artist for this. I looked online at a lot of different art, and I felt this connection and it would work with the music that we created. When I saw his work, I was impressed by it. I got in touch with him, explained the idea and the concept and he really liked the idea behind what I wanted to do visually for the album. W…
…ked about it for weeks. Then everyone said no, but he had bought the stuff online and we felt that it was a little bit different. There’s no meaning behind it. The original picture we had, during the pandemic, we had sent selfies to an artist and he painted this digital picture, which was cool, but it seemed more like Gloryhammer. We didn’t want to dress like wizards, or in this universe, a wizard could be a guy wearing a black hoodie and a visor…
…der to win at the game. Currently we are going through this all ourselves. Online promotion, online marketing, getting all the statistics. Who is listening where, how long are they listen, the demographic of the person that is listening. I need to make sure the marketing money is well spent, because money doesn’t grow on trees. That money has to be smart, you have to be smart on your attack to take down the music industry. It’s a bloated industry,…
…th workshops and then the pandemic happened. I had to switch completely to online lessons. I have had online students for about four years now, simply because of the fact that it’s rare to find a teacher in these harsh/guttural vocal styles. People from all around the world come to me, and usually I round it up with giving one-on-one workshops and also having 15-20 people in one place. But I couldn’t do that, so as the pandemic stuck around, I tri…
…d executives these days don’t go out to shows anymore, they look for stuff online. That’s why you see bands spending a lot of money on a record, put it out, no one will hear it, and then they’ll break up and be bitter about it. More bands need to be smart about things. Go with the times and be relevant. One thing that is adding on to it. A lot of artists these days have a false sense of pride. I’m not putting my music on Spotify, live streams – oh…
…d teach my techniques. When I was asked by Drum-Technique Academy to do an online clinic for them, I looked at their materials and thought they were way better. They were very structured. If I was a young drummer and I wanted to approach double bass drumming, I would definitely book that program. So with songwriting, it’s different. Most of my songwriting comes from a position where I stand in front of my cd shelf and I try to find something to li…
…a massive legal tie-up due to the Fear Factory name as well as the heated online controversy between now ex-member Burton C. Bell and Dino Cazares, it seems lucky that we are even sitting here discussing this album at all. And long time fans have much to be thankful for, as Aggression Continuum is one of the strongest Fear Factory albums, period. That futuristic, cinematic cyber groove that has defined Fear Factory is ultimately at its best with…
…A lot of people will say that it’s out there, or sometimes people tell us online that they don’t know what we are going for. It’s too all over the place. I’m really proud of it, because what we did was create something new. Even the producer, Mitchell Marlow, kept telling me. He said, “What we have done here is made a new genre, essentially. It doesn’t sound like anything else. It sounds new and fresh. It’s exciting.” He was saying that it was so…
…ve control over who you have in your life, and you have a right to do that online as well. If someone is openly being nasty online, people always crack out that line ‘it’s a public Facebook page, and I can say what I like,’ well actually its my Facebook page and my rules, so no you don’t. It’s about setting your own standards and rules. Dead Rhetoric: The concept of mental health and getting help seems to be an important one to the band. Could you…
…ouring. The other one is that we are in discussions to see if we can do an online show at some point. Hopefully towards the end of summer, because we have some things that don’t allow us to play. One of our guitarists is going to have his first kid, so the band will go according to that. But at one point, we are planning to do an online show. Other than that, we are doing as much press as we can and we are going to try to push the release through…
…rt a band, before you really get your first release or put your first song online, you need to be sure and have a complete concept of what you are trying to be and what you want to sound like. I don’t get the idea of bands that do a demo and say ‘this is just a demo – we will get a proper sound on the record.’ The first impression is the most important impression, no matter the medium you choose. We did these mistakes too – in other bands before V…
…room learning by ear. I gradually grew my own style. Now there are so many online lessons and apps that you can play along to. Rocksmith is essentially Guitar Hero for real guitar. I think all that is really good but I hope people don’t fall into the trap of relying on that kind of stuff. Once you gain the groundwork of whatever instrument you are learning, I think you need to take a step back and learn it for yourself because I think that’s the b…
…ing for me. Matt actually got me this old, antique stand-up piano he found online for Christmas for me. I hadn’t played piano since I was a teenager really, and just decided to learn one of the Sumo songs piano-style. I am always down with taking songs down a different style. The fans, in the past, have always enjoyed the acoustic versions. They show a different side of the same song. We will definitely do more of that stuff. Dead Rhetoric: The la…
…up prior to release of this debut album Poetica with special covers issued online of favorites by Tears for Fears, In Flames, and David Bowie, Stranger Vision already prove to be an all-encompassing metal act willing to take risks. Forming in the spring of 2019, they spent the better part of a year writing this material – choosing to team up with Domination Studios and the skills of Simone Bertozzi (Ancient Bards) and Simone Mularoni (DGM) for eng…
…is still there. We’ve seen a steady group of people buying our merchandise online, because they can’t get out to gigs. We need their support financially, so buying our merchandise has been really nice to see that, it makes you feel wanted. Once this all clears, people will have a bit more appreciation for the things that they’ve missed. Dead Rhetoric: We lost a pioneer for the Swedish death scene in Entombed vocalist LG Petrov recently. Do you hav…
…apy. But we have been productive. Like every other band, we have become an online store to basically sell clothing. We sell merch and we have been writing. We are about halfway through our next album, just from being stuck and not being able to do anything else. Dead Rhetoric: So do you have any plans for 2021 outside of the album release? Harper: We are looking to tour, possibly in the fall. Our booking agent is starting to say that it’s more and…
…e bit with this band. We are really dependent on the fans buying our music online, supporting us, buying t-shirts – and the world is a strange place right now for bands that used to be very active and for concerts in general. It will be one of the most challenging things ahead of us in the next year and maybe years. Dead Rhetoric: Name three albums that have had the most impact on your views and impressions for heavy metal – and what was the best…
…in person for nearly a year, and we were working on this album completely online. We were exchanging ideas and conversations on messaging. We haven’t met in the recording studio, and this is the first time in history that we recorded a Crystal Viper album without seeing each other. Everybody recorded their tracks in their own home studio. And then when all the tracks were done, we sent them to Cederick Forsberg who is our new drummer, he did the…
…hat the amount of success the band got as the band was growing was because online we kind of let our personalities and things shine through. When we are onstage, we kind of enforce people to have a great time. They are partying, they are stage diving, crowdsurfing, and moshing like crazy. We want to showcase that kind of atmosphere in our music and in our videos just because we don’t know when we will play shows in the future. We want that atmosph…
…r 2021? Issa: I really have no idea. I have been thinking about doing some online stuff. But other than that, planning any form of anything seems to be out of the question at the moment. I’m just taking one day at a time. My immediate thing would be to meet up with some friends and go out for a drink. That would be lovely. But other than that, for the rest of the year, we will have to take it as it comes. We are pretty lucky in the UK, as we are t…
…ned for this year? van Giersbergen: I am planning and working on something online-ish around the release of the album. Something beautiful to go online with. Other than that, I will continue playing my set and rehearsing until I can go out and play. I hope we can do something live in the summer – something outdoors. But proper touring and traveling, and traveling to the US – that will be 2022. But there are tours, in pencil, in the agenda. We are…
…out of control. It’s not only the price, but that you have to fill in the online form that takes forever. Then you have to go an embassy, and so I lose like two days because I have to fly to one. It’s really a huge effort before you can even get to the US. If you have to pay a huge amount of money for that, at a certain point it’s like – c’mon, it has to be worth it or you can’t keep doing it anymore. Dead Rhetoric: I don’t want to sidetrack too…
…and push themselves into the world. Dead Rhetoric: In an interview you did online a couple of years back for Decibel magazine, you mention that ‘I love Spain, but my Spain died in 1936.’ Can you tell us a bit more about your views on your home country, the government, and why things have been so different from that year forward in your eyes? Izquierdo: It’s quite difficult. With this information, I wanted to say in 1936 there was a civil war withi…
…my attention because the Dublin Simon Community had done a series of live, online gigs. A friend of ours Connor had done a gig, and when I did my homework they were doing amazing work when COVID hit. They were looking after people that were being affected worse than everybody. Lack of provision for people coming into the country, addiction issues, and they do an amazing job helping there. They were out on the streets every night, helping the homel…
…, they go absolutely crazy. I’ve got a couple of clips that I’ve posted up online – I’ve got a live montage that I am working on for another single and you’ll see some of that footage in there. Hanging from the ceiling, hanging from the air ducts, very crazy. Maybe it might be something in their town and the way they grew up, they are looking for a release and it’s just fantastic. Dead Rhetoric: What can you tell us about the New Zealand metal sce…
…d be not until next summer when gigs start happening, we may have to do an online thing. I know Andrew is writing some more material, but we have no focus on any sort of release after the EP. We are just keeping ourselves busy. We are launching a My Dying Bride beer called Old Earth. That should be good fun. We are trying to keep busy and showing people that we are still around. We aren’t just sitting on our hands. We are just trying to do what we…
