Category: Interviews


Artist: Born of Osiris

Song: “Follow The Signs”

Album: The Discovery

Director: Andrew Pulaski of Abstrakt Pictures

When it comes to metal music videos, I tend to prevent myself from getting my hopes up. More often than not, I am tragically disappointed when my favorite bands release a music video. Lately, I seem to be drowning in boring, mediocre, and cookie cutter videos that wouldn’t dare push the boundaries of a cliché but rather just pump the video out, get paid, and move on to the next half-assed gig. It’s rare to find a director or crew that are passionate enough about the music that they are motivated to actually produce something unique, powerful, and fitting for a song. Basically, there needs to be more directors like Andrew Pulaski at Abstrakt pictures, who put the work and artistic vision of his videos above all aspects like money, time, and risk. His latest piece for Born of Osiris is a perfect example of the bars he is aiming to raise.

The video opens with a gorgeous high-speed ascendance into space, (of which I’ve watched countless times because it fits absolutely perfectly to Born of Osiris’ ambient interlude ‘The Omniscient’), to a dimension beyond ours where we get to see the amazingly talented Cameron Gray’s artwork explode into life. Turn it on 1080p and keep your third eye wide open, because this video is quite the trip, and one of my longest reviews yet.

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Progressive/technical deathcore pioneers Veil of Maya are preparing to release a new album called Eclipse soon, and I caught up with them at a show to ask them a few questions. I was able to talk to singer Brandon and guitarist Marc, and we chatted a bit about stuff, including their new album and the band’s writing process.

Hi, this is Noyan from Heavy Blog Is Heavy. So, you guys have a new album coming up…

Brandon Butler: Yeah, it’s called Eclipse, it comes out February 28th.

What can you tell us about the new album? [Marc walks in] Is it like a continuation of your sound, or something different, or maybe going back?

Marc Okubo: I would say it definitely sounds like us, but we’ve gotten better. Our playing’s improved, I like the production on it a lot. We added more elements like more synths and… it’s like more over the top sounding.

BB: Yeah.

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I’ve always been a huge fan of Luke Jaeger’s brainchild Sleep Terror. His brand of instrumental funky shred death is very unique, and his DIY formula is very inspiring. He’s taken the time to do an interview with us, which you can read below. If you somehow haven’t heard of Luke or Sleep Terror, you should definitely check out his material over on Bandcamp!

How and when did you start to play the guitar?

I picked it up at 11 pretty much. I was obsessed with music from an early age and felt it was long overdue to begin even then.

How did you get the idea to create Sleep Terror?

I always wanted to set out and do my own thing. I remember from as early as 12 or 13 writing a lot of my own stuff, recording my own ideas on 4-tracks and crappy cassette players. After many of the influences melded and death metal became a huge staple of my life it pretty much came into place. There was never a specific formula, it was just writing and playing many styles of music that I love and making it one entity.

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Photo by Harrison Letchford

Yesterday we posted our interview of Last Chance To Reason, but it isn’t the only band we talked to this week. On the very same Protest the Hero headlining tour (which ended last night), we spoke to Chris Letchford of the instrumental progressive rock/metal band Scale The Summit about instrumental music, their latest album The Collective, and the past couple of years on the road.

You guys played phenomenal tonight.

Awesome!

This was the first time I’ve seen you guys live, but I’ve been a fan for a while. Something I’ve always wanted to know; your songs sound very cinematic, like they invoke these images of landscapes and everything with song titles like “The Great Plains” and “Whales.” Do you go into it as if you want to write a song about whales or do you apply the title after the fact?

Usually after the fact. Yeah, cause usually when we write, we’ll finish a song and then we kind of sit back and listen to kind of visualize imagery from all the moods and whatnot that’s going on in the song. Yeah, it’s definitely afterwards, for sure.

Instrumental music seems to have a better market now than it did when you first started. That could be because of technology and everything, but how do you see the more popularity of instrumental music?

You’re definitely right. It’s not that it has more of a market, I think there’s more people are accepting of it, but that’s because instrumental bands are actually touring now, you know? Because there’s been instrumental forever, but it’s just the only people touring instrumental were like Vai and Satriani and a little bit of Petrucci. [Liquid Tension Experiment] never actually physically toured, you know? So they’ve been around since the late 90s or whatever. But yeah, with us, Animals as Leaders, Pelican, Russian Circles and all those bands actually touring, it’s easier for us to get instrumental music out there. So people always say, “Oh, you know instrumental is getting popular now.” It’s like, yeah, more in the touring world, but you know it’s obviously been around forever, it’s just now there are actually bands that are going out there and touring.

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[Photos by Jeremy Saffer]

The year 2011 was a fantastic year for music, with many excellent debut albums coming out across the metal spectrum. One breakout act of 2011 is Portland, Maine’s Last Chance To Reason, whose album Level 2 absolutely blew us away. They’re wrapping up a tour alongside Scale The Summit and Protest the Hero at the moment, where I caught up with vocalist Michael Lessard and drummer Evan Sammons in Knoxville, TN to talk about Level 2, their lineup change, Michael’s rugged good looks, and more.

So, first off, I was told by Chris [Disinformasiya] at Heavy Blog to ask why [Michael is] so pretty.

Evan Sammons: [laughs]
Michael Lessard: Why I’m so pretty? I guess I’d have to thank my parents for that one. Just got a fairly decent genetic mix-up.
ES: That’s like asking why Ellen DeGeneres is so pretty, right?
ML: Yeah, I don’t know. It’s one of the mysteries of the world, I guess. [laughs]
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Corelia: The Cut Guest Interview!

“The Cut? Wait, what is that?!”

The Cut is a student-ran magazine at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Among their ranks is resident metalhead and admin Dan Curhan, regular HBIH reader and commenter. While The Cut is a music rag of sorts, their focus isn’t really the same as ours; while Dan runs a monthly metal column, the overall scope is more broad and all-encompassing. Not too long ago, Dan hit up Heavy Blog favorites Corelia for an interview and thought it appropriate for us to cross-post. We were more than happy to oblige! Read Dan’s interview with guitarist Chris Dower, bassist Adrian Alperstein, and drummer Clayton Pratt below, where they discuss their excellent new EP Nostalgia and vocalist Ryan Devlin’s new position in The Human Abstract.

 

The Cut: You guys have just recorded and released your EP, and you did that all yourselves, right?

Chris Dower: Yeah, we pretty much did everything ourselves. The only we didn’t really do ourselves was the final mastering. The guy who mastered it, his name is Luke Martin, he’s from the UK. Um, cool guy. Never really talked to him, just over Facebook, but he offered to master the EP for free. So we called him up.

 

The Cut: Nice! So did you buy all your equipment? Or did you rent it? Or..?

CD: Well, Ryan [Borrell, the other guitar player] and I both own Axe-Fxs, so that makes recording the guitar pretty easy. Other than that, we just used Superior Drummer for the drums, and vocals…

Clayton Pratt: Yeah, vocals we pretty much did the same thing. Cheap stuff, we used a [PreSonus] FireBox, which is a lower model of a Firepod, which we used for the interface and the preamp for the mic. The mic we used was an SM-7b, and going into Cubase, and yeah, that’s it. That’s all we use.

 

The Cut: Nothing too fancy, but it came out really good.

CD: Yeah, we were surprised. We were kinda wary – we started recording the EP and we were like “uhh how’s this gonna turn out? we’re not really experienced with self recording.” It was painful, but it turned out really well, I think.

CP: Yeah, it took a lot of extra time making, like, that kind of stuff sound professional. We just took the extra time to make it sound professional.

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Original photo by Anthony Dubois.

Believe it or not, France is steadily becoming a beacon for excellent metal, as evidenced by this year’s stellar debut releases from Uneven Structure and Betraying The Martyrs, the latter of which are currently embarking on their first ever tour in America, supporting Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, and Carnifex [show review here]. I caught up with Betraying the Martyrs bassist Valentin Hauser for an exclusive interview in which he discusses the origin of the band’s name and the troubles of getting a European band into America. I also make a fool of myself by pronouncing his name wrong. Luckily, Valentin is a great sport and a friendly dude!

Alright, so for everyone who doesn’t know, who are you and what do you do?

I am Valentin and I play bass for Betraying the Martyrs.

Oh! “Valentine!” I’ve been pronouncing it like “Valenteen” this whole time! [laughs]

Yeah, in French, “Valenteen” is a name for a girl…

Oh!

So please, don’t do so! [laughs]

I apologize! I am very American…

No problem!

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Photo courtesy of our friend Patrick Häberli of Prog Hippie

Since we first heard it, it hasn’t left our ears much since. Uneven Structure‘s much anticipated debut album Februus is making waves that will no doubt propel them to the forefront of progressive metal. We spoke with uneven axeman Auré “worC” Pereira for an interview regarding Februus, his kickass hair, and other such oddities.

First off, introduce yourself! Who are you, what do you do, and why should people care?

Hey my name’s Auré, I play guitar in Uneven Structure and people should care because I have strange hair.

So your debut album Februus is finally here and the feedback has been phenomenal. How’s it feel?

After all these years of hard work, it feels a bit weird actually to know that Februus is finally out and that we don’t have any control on it anymore. To be honest we weren’t expecting such a huge amount of feedback. People seem to enjoy it a lot, the reviews have all been very positive and as far as I know pre-sales are good so yeah, we can say we are really happy with how things look at the moment.

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WEEK ONE!
WEEK TWO!
WEEK THREE!

Our tour-long interview with the great prog progenitors Textures has come to an end. Periphery‘s Frak The Gods tour featuring The Human Abstract, Textures, and The Contortionist ends this weekend, October 8th, in Richmond, VA. Check out our fourth and final interview with Textures below:

 

Tour’s just about over! How did this tour treat you compared to your expectations?

Zzzz, we’re still sleeping…zzz..eeh expectations. Wake up guys! It’s HeavyBlog.

Hey, here we are! Well, what we didn’t expect was that we would lose weight and would get so little sleep. Personally I’ve never experienced so many days with 4 hours of sleep, no breakfast and a crappy dinner. Actually we thought we would gain weight because of all the fastfood stores over here. Instead of USA our girlfriends probably think we did a hiking trail for weeks haha.
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WEEK ONE!
WEEK TWO!

Each week while out on the Frak The Gods Tour in support of their fantastic new album Dualism, Textures are taking fan questions and answering them here on Heavy Blog! The last of the questions have been sent in, so if your question wasn’t answered or you missed your opportunity, then we apologize!

Here’s this week’s Q&A:

What is your proudest recorded moment? Like a riff, lead, fill (what have you) that comes to mind as being extremely proud of?

STEF: I think the new song Singularity. I guess to all Textures guys this is a new masterpiece in the band’s history. A typical Textures song with a lot of rhythmical and structural changes and a long tensionspan that totally drags you into its vastness. All musical qualtities of us personally + the total bandqualties is expressed in its best way.

How do you think North American crowds compare to European crowds? I’ve heard they’re quite different in some instances.

STEF: It differs from city to city. For us cities with universities are the best to play. We attract a lot of people between 18 and 27. In other cities there’s more kids and most of the time they are a bit less into music, but more into socializing. That’s not especially good or bad, it’s just different from where we come from. The social aspect is of course very important in Europe, but at concerts the music comes always first.

Besides that I think that European bands sound different than US bands. European bands are more into experimenting with their sound (Anathema, Radiohead, Katatonia, Textures) while US bands stick more to a certain – commercial – formula.

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