…re memorable songs. With every album that comes out, we try to put out the best representation of us, and we want to put out great live sets so that people look forward to seeing the band. As far as the entire scene goes, it’s hard to say because the scene develops differently depending on the country. Most definitely there seems to be a strong interest in the genre, I can’t see signs of things getting smaller. I would love to see even more people…
…do two vocal songs – it just ended up that those two vocal songs were the best songs I had. Maybe it’s time to do my band. I had the singer, the band, maybe now is the time to start what I didn’t do at sixteen. At 34 I started the band I wanted to do back then. Dead Rhetoric: Eternal Flame is the second NorthTale album and follow-up to Welcome to Paradise from 2019. Outside of gaining a new vocalist in Guilherme Hirose, what do you see as the maj…
…was a huge Sublime fan for many years. I went to see a Badfish show – the best tribute band to Sublime, at the Palladium. It wasn’t the best show I’d ever seen, but it was my first show and I was there with my best friend at the time. It was so refreshing, the second I saw that stage and the band, I loved it. Dead Rhetoric: What’s next on the agenda for Fathom Farewell over the next twelve months? Have you already been hard at work behind the sce…
…. I had thirteen titles, and I did it without a break. I started in July of 2019 and was finished in December 2019. It was a huge process, a very complex process. Dead Rhetoric: When it comes to your work as a songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist – which areas do you believe take the most time to lock in and develop? Has the process evolved and changed now this deep into your career, or are certain aspects tougher/harder than others because of gett…
…f the songwriting, production, and performances versus the Impulses EP from 2015 and your self-titled full-length in 2018? Lovio: For the Impulses EP we had a different guitar player and a different drummer. The majority of the songs – one of the songs was written by me during the college time band I was just mentioning, the other two songs were written by the guitar player at that time. The guitar player and drummer decided to go in their own dir…
…s old and when I started music, especially in the metal world, I was around 20 years old. It was around 2010-ish and things were a lot different then. I think women are taken a lot more seriously now, but I don’t even want to make this a gender thing. I think it was mostly the fact that I was a singer and I have had no formal education theory. I play piano and am completely self-taught. With vocals, learned most of my techniques by myself. So I fo…
…xample, our photo shoot earlier today. Those photo shoots are normally like 20-30 pictures. We will probably post 1-3 max. The others are going to be on Patreon. I think it’s fair. There’s so much work behind every picture and every show, behind every video there are a ton of people involved. I share a lot of what I eat and do on tour – people are curious but I don’t feel like sharing that on Instagram really. I don’t want to bore people with what…
…ecorded even. From that, that kicked off our time in the band with him from 2015 to 2017 where we blossomed, I think. On a live perspective we got to go out on tour with D.R.I., that was a big deal for us. We played some significant shows around San Francisco, Oakland, and the Bay Area – we were one of three bands to play with Exodus at their two-night residency at The Chapel in San Francisco. That was a big deal for us – we were asked by Exodus’…
…I think Moody was in there and some others. The assumption that they know best, and so any contradictory information is questionable at best, or assumed to be wrong. They describe that leadership style as ‘arrogance and ignorance disguised as disdain.’ They are either too arrogant to believe they could be wrong, or they are too ignorant and they can’t understand it. If they can’t understand it, they just disdain it. They treat it as if it’s not w…
…as possible, to perform our new album Quadra. We want to be on the road in 2022, and make up for all the stuff that we didn’t do in 2020. See where we are then, take things step by step. Dead Rhetoric: Now that you are in your fifties, what is left personally on your bucket list of goals or experiences you want to achieve that you haven’t been able to at this point – either with Sepultura or in your own personal wishes? Kisser: It’s funny. I was…
…opean festival, I’ve been to that festival over ten times. Looking back, in 2005 I went entirely on my own. And that was one of my best years as I ended up making so many new friends. When you go and do something crazy like going to a different country entirely on your own, you open up much more to people. Dead Rhetoric: How do you see the next year or two setting up for Neonfly in terms of promotion, recordings, touring/festival situations? Are y…
…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…
…e. I am aiming for 91 Megadeth, those eras of those bands were lethal, the best. The best you are ever going to see of that scope of the music. Those are the things I shoot for. It’s not easy, the vocals you have allergies, you are on swing shift, those can be hard to pound down the way you want it done. There is no bar above those two showings of live excellence. Fast riffs, loud guitars, you are taken away from what you are doing and watch us pl…
…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…
…/improvements have you made as Mark of the Wolf definitely represents your best work to date – especially evident on some of the higher notes/screams throughout the record? Delbridge: First of all, thank you very much Matt, I really appreciate it! The thing is, guitar playing for me personally does come easier for me because that was the first instrument I picked up when I was seven years old. I can play some really tough stuff but I’m not one of…
…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…
…c, and it has some of the best dynamics of the furious rage and angelic melodies that allowed Fear Factory to rise up with their unique and iconic sound in the ‘90s. Even without Bell going forward, the potential is there with Cazares’ leading the attack so one has to hope for the best. Regardless, even though Demanufacture is the band’s definitive classic, Aggression Continuum easily sits alongside Obsolete and Mechanize as one of the band’s best…
…]. Dead Rhetoric: It’s a nice acknowledgement to be able to see what works best for someone else, but this is what works for me. I think that takes a lot of self-reflection. Rennick: At the end of the day, all I want with music is for it to be fun. I want it to be upbeat and fun. I want our shows to be high energy. When I am onstage, I want to be able to dance around to our music. I don’t want to just be up there angry and screaming for the whole…
…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…
…g as much press as we can and we are going to try to push the release through social media. Also, we have started composing songs for the next album and plan to finish before the end of 2021 and then in 2022 we can enter the studio to record the next album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9HnO1woqk Scar of the Sun on Facebook…
…at a drummer should do here and there, know the patterns and what could be best. Writing music down in certain programs and sending it across so we don’t record every riff we do, but rather tap it. In Guitar Pro we can change up the tempos, it’s pretty much the stuff that ends up on the record in the end. Dead Rhetoric: Who do you look to for inspiration as far as your guitar playing? Do you think your abilities have changed over the years? Castev…
…running writing new material, and it was about a year – I joined in October 2018 and it was July 2019, and it was down to Matt to do the lyrics and the vocals. The only downside to that is he didn’t have a lot of time, about a year of waiting. And then it fell to me to do the lyrics and the vocals, and we knew it was coming that Matt left the band. It fell to me to literally do the vocals. It was a long time, a few things happened that made things…
…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…
…s appear at the start, midway point and conclusion – “The Dying Light” the best of the bunch, featuring an acoustic guitar/symphonic instrumental start before the progressive, neoclassical/ electrical charge kicks the energy up ten notches. Whether power metal or traditional minded, Stranger Vision seem to build off the foundation with natural branches, including those minor details of vocal melodies/harmonies that make “Rage” and “Defying Gravity…
…reat to play these shows, don’t get me wrong- it’s an experience to play to 20,000 people at once. We don’t do everything though, we are selective in what we do because our time is precious, really. We have responsibilities outside of the band, we have a discussion about what we want to do. We try to find a nice balance between our personal lives, our social lives, and the band activities. I’m looking forward to going back and doing any kind of sh…
…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…
…, but its cool to know that I can do some new stuff. Dead Rhetoric: Back in 2018 you had to deal with a very stressful situation concerning your clothing business Thunderball clothing, Arch Enemy, and a photograph that caused a copyright controversy – to the point that you shut down the company. How has your health – and mental health – been in those years since, and what do you think you learned most from this situation? Gabriel: My mental health…
…icture. We are the guys who are smiling onstage – we are happy. We are all best friends so we are having the time of our lives when we are doing anything that involves this band. That said, any time we have a video, we want to get a laugh or at least crack a smile from someone. Dead Rhetoric: I’m sure that you have heard this one before, but what goes into designing a logo like yours? Swank: That logo has been modified. The original sketch was fro…
…lly soon. Dead Rhetoric: The album comes out soon. What else is planned for 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 wi…
