Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Progenies interview

1.For those that have never heard of you before, can you tell us a little bit about the band?

Well, the band started back in 2008 under the name Eyeless. At the time we were a melodic Death metal band and we had a keyboard player. We soon realised that a keyboard wasn’t providing the sound we were looking for so we went for a second guitar player instead thus changing to a more progressive sound. Opeth have been huge influence on us. Our line-up remained that way for some years until we recently decided to add a female vocalist, Karina, to our line-up to expand the band's possibilities.


2.Recently you have released a new album, how would you describe the musical sound that is presented on the recording and also how does it differ from the material you had released as 'Eyeless'?

As always we want our songs to be as diverse as possible, never limiting ourselves to a style or sound. David was the main songwriter during the Eyeless' The All Seeing Eye period, and we soon realised that writing all together allowed us to delve deeper and mix several influences. However, this proved to be quite the challenge – 4 guys arguing how this riff or that riff should be played! But all in all, it paid off since the record is extremely diverse. The older songs were much more simple and we didn’t really worry about the tiny details. With time, our sound evolved from a more straight-forward Death Metal one to a more metric-crazy sound typical of progressive metal. To put it VERY roughly, you could say we’re a mix of Opeth, Meshuggah and quite a few other bands actually.

3.What are some of the lyrical topics and subjects the band explores with the music?

Power, death, mental illness, war. All smooth, laid-back subjects I guess! We all participate in the writing process. Most of the time we are going for thoughtful, profound texts as opposed to a more direct, raw approach.


4.Originally the band was called 'Eyeless', what was the decision behind the name change and also the meaning and inspiration behind the name 'Progenies'?

The main reason is that there is already another band called Eyeless from France, and we wanted to avoid confusion as much as possible. With the actual means of communication, our music can be easily distributed in Europe so in order to avoid legal problems we went for another name. Progenies occurred to us from our drummer when he listened the Dimmu Borgir track : Progenies of the Great Apocalypse, and we all agreed Progenies was a nice name that suits us!


5.What are some of the best shows that the band has played over the years and also how would you describe your stage performance?

Hum best shows... probably opening for Kataklysm and Augury. But the best reaction we had from the crowd was at our second ever gig. It was past midnight and we were closing the night. At the very first note, everyone went bat-shit crazy and formed a violent pit! Someone fell on the stage during the first song. It was awesome.

As for stage performance, we mostly concentrate on our playing. We are by no means stage beasts, but a couple of jokes between songs is always nice!


6.Do you have any touring or show plans for the future?

Not for now. Touring is difficult for some of us. We do want to play gigs again, but we are currently looking for a new bass player so as long as the position is not filled it is going to be difficult.


7.Currently you are unsigned, are you looking for a label or have received any interest?

We did receive interest from a Canadian label, but in the end things didn’t work out – different schedules. We wanted the album to be distributed as soon as possible, but the label was booked until mid 2015. We are definitely looking for a label though.


8.On a worldwide level how has the feedback been to your music by fans of death metal?

For now, the new album seems to be undercover! Seriously, it has not been heard much, but the people who listened to it told us it was awesome! But yeah, all the feedback we received has been positive so far. The album is slowly making its way to the public and we get more and more positive feedbacks.

9.Where do you see the band heading into musically during the future?

We are currently in the studio to record a new EP and the new stuff is more straight-to-the-point, more aggressive. Clean passages are still there, but in a more effective kind of way. I think it has less of that progressive vibe to it, and we definitely parted with the Opeth influences. With Karina joining the band, we are making more room for female vocals of course.

We are also working on something completely different that involves a lot of scores and orchestras, we will see how that turns out!


10.What are some of the bands or musical styles that have had an influence on your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?

As much as Opeth was our primary influence in the past, we progressively added influences from Meshuggah, Dream Theater, Pat Metheny and other various shredders to our music.

These days, David is listening to more black metal (hence the change to a higher-pitched vocal), doom and dark jazz. Simon is a lot into shredders, technical progressive metal and score. Our drummer listens to electronic (Skrillex) , pop rock (Muse-Coldplay) and progressive music. Karina likes progressive bands like Opeth and Dream Theater but she also listens to metalcore bands like August Burns Red, All That Remains, Feels Like Home, As I Lay Dying. David, Simon and Xavier have together a rock cover band, so they do listen to the old, classic stuff!

11.What are some of your non musical interests?

Simon is an awesome cartoonist! No kidding! You can check his stuff out at http://www.sketchoholic.com/simongag. There are caricatures of the band on the page as well! And if you like his work, don't hesitate to click the push it button and sign so he'll get his artbook released. Simon is also a swing dancer! Karina has a passion for photography. She likes to go to concerts and take pictures of the bands.


12.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?

It was a real pleasure answering these questions, keep rocking!!

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