SHADES OF DUSK – Interview with vocalist Joffrey Chouinard and guitarist Lous.

Shades of dusk is a colorful and descriptive phrase. When the earth turns away from the sun and daylight dies, the world is filled with a myriad of radiant colors, long shadows, and an absence of light. Quebec, Canadas SHADES OF DUSK could not have picked a more fitting band moniker. The groups debut album on Galy records, like a days end, is filled with both luminescence and dim darkness, often displaying both moods at the same time. Fans that revel in depressive death metal with a melodic edge in the tradition of Gothenburgs pioneers read the following interview with SHADES OF DUSKs vocalist Joffrey Chouinard and guitarist Lous.

Please give a brief history of your band.

Joff: The band was created a while ago by Julien Rodrigue (bass) and Samuel Desjardins (guitar). In 2003, I joined the band and we recorded a 4 song demo A Gleam of Obscurity. We did a lot of local shows and began to make a name for ourselves. Then in 2004, Louis-Philippe joined the band and thats where it gets more serious. In the summer of 2005 we recorded our first record with Yannick St-Amand. We signed on Galy Records and Caress the Despair was released in March of 2006.

The guitars on Caress the Despair are varied, especially the picking style. Where did you learn to play guitar. When did you first start playing music?

Louis: I started playing guitar eight or nine years ago in a lame punk rock band with some of my friends from high school, but soon after we started playing metal. The band was called WASTE LAND (cheesy) and was later renamed DIPHTHERIA. Our songs fitted within the traditional or old school death metal genre. It is through this band that I slowly learned to play guitar. Actually, all the band members learned a great deal about music, song writing, and musicianship. Although we later split up, some of them still play in different bands, namely Benoit Landreville (CAMILLA RHODES, ORPHANS IN COMA) and Pierre-Luc Simon (CORTISOL, DENTIST). I later joined SHADES OF DUSK after they had recorded their first demo (A Gleam of Obscurity). At first I was not used to playing their style; I was used to playing death metal, not melodic death metal. Nevertheless, I started to enjoy the melodies and harmonies and increasingly enjoyed the more nuanced approach to song writing that these guys had. It even helped me doing better leads and solos.

The picking style on Caress the Despair is indeed varied, for many reasons I believe. Most of the songs on this album were composed by Julien whos actually our bassist! For instance, he wrote the music for Carved within the Milestone, Caress the Despair and As Daylight Fades. On the other hand, Samuel was responsible for Shaped to Symbolize, while I was for Upon Burning Wings. We all pitched in for the other songs, either for a couple of riffs, leads, solos or whatever. By paying close attention, you can see the differences not necessarily in the style of songs, but rather how the riffs are made and how the picking is performed and varies.

Going back to the guitar playing on Caress the Despair, if you were to teach a student how to play your music, what picking styles and fret techniques would you have to teach him/her?

Louis: without a doubt, triplets are a must. I think the triplets are partly responsible for that good ol Swedish sound, along with the major and minor third harmonies. Our songs have very few power chords and rely on other types of chords. There are a couple of tappings here and there, and a few sweeps in The Mournful Dawn of Existence solo. Although there are not blatant, there are a couple of odd times in the songs. Theres not much more to add here, but expect something different on the next album. The new songs show more intricate guitar work, faster picking, more time changes and a more aggressive sound, while still keeping a melodic approach and its suited picking.

Besides a few moments like the last track Shades of Dusk, your melodies are created entirely through electric guitar harmonies. It has become a bit trendy to use female vocals, keyboards and classical instrumentation. Would you consider using those elements on a future release?

Joff: I dont think so. Not that we have something against using those types of elements in metal, but were moving toward a more extreme and brutal type of music. Our main focus right now is to write the most violent stuff we ever did for the next record! I think that the keyboard is kind of interesting. It can add atmosphere and create moods that can be really fascinating.

The lyrics on Caress the Despair are quite heartfelt and poetic. Each song is filled with vivid imagery and excellent figurative language. Who writes the lyrics? If it is a joint effort, do you see a difference in each writing style?

Joff: I wrote must of the lyrics on Caress the Despair. When I began writing down ideas for the record, I never thought we would actually finish the record! When I saw that we had something like 6, 7 and then 8I said to myself, yeah, I think we got ourselves a record! I would have loved to write a more thematic album in a way, but I think I reached my goal to write about things that people could easily relate to in their every day life. To be honest, I ran out of ideas during the writing process and Louis-Philippe (guitar) wrote 2 songs (As Daylight Fades, Upon Burning Wings). We have definitely some pretty evident differences in our writing style. L-P is much more eloquent, profound and precise in his choosing of words. Im metaphoric and poetic, using lots of imagery and letting the fans figure out by themselves whats the true meaning of each song.

Louis: Joffrey wrote the lyrics for almost all the songs, except for As Daylight Fades and Upon Burning Wings. Speaking on my behalf, I prefer to use a figurative and almost ambiguous language because I like the fact that someone that reads my texts can put thought into or reflect on what he or she is reading, while giving the freedom to give any meaning to the words he or she wants. I tend to give chronology to my lyrics. In As Daylight Fades, I use the strong symbol of the passing of seasons to establish a sense of time. In Upon Burning Wings, a certain chronology is also present, but I also use a spatial symbolism, falling from sky to ground. Although it was not my main intention, some have seen an analogy between this song and the myth of Icarus. I feel as if Joffreys lyrics are even more complex as he uses less common metaphors and surprising comparisons. Unlike my lyrics that seem to tell a story, his lyrics seem more like a statement. Joffrey and I write our lyrics separately, but we do sometimes help each other, either for titles, song structure, where to fit lyrics over the music or even for a simple word in a sentence. This sharing of the lyric writing has worked well for this album and will probably be done the same for the next album. Again, the lyrics will deal with personal themes.

Considering the poetic depth of your lyrics, where do you get inspiration to write your songs? Do you read poetry?

Joff: Thanks! I take this a compliment! Im not such a big poetry fan, but I do read a lot. I studied literature, so that helped me a lot getting inspirations while writing the lyrics. My main muse for these ones were my every day struggles; with choices we have to make during our evolution, my perspective on modern societys failures, on how people easily made up thing about someone just by hearing rumorsthose kind of hard themes that I think are not really original but I took it in a dimension not so often used in metal, in a much more metaphoric or poetic, as you said. Philosophy also inspired me during the creative parts of this record. Did I mention I was pretty depressed too? Hahaha!

SHADE OF DUSK has a definite melodic death influence, in particular, Swedish bands like older IN FLAMES and DARK TRANQUILITY. What albums did your bands listen to that just made you say man, I want to create a band so I can make music this damn good,?

Joff: Of course were all big DT and Ifs fans. They are my two personal favorites back when I began listening to death metal made in Europe. Colony and The Gallery are true classics I think. Vocally, I must admit that Anders Friden (IN FLAMES), Trevor Strnad (THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER) and Frank Mullen (SUFFOCATION) are my mains inspirations concerning my vocals. We do have some differences in our preferences, some are more into brutal stuff, some love the melodic parts and even the more hardcore stuff, bands like WITHIN Y, NEURAXIS, AT THE GATES (of course!), HATESPHERE and ARSIS also contributed a lot to the SHADES OF DUSKs sound.

How do you feel about the current state of melodic death metal?

Joff: I believe that the melodic death metal is a genre that needs to reinvent itself. A lot of bands have contributed to the actual sounds; a lot tried to leave a mark but failed miserably. We are in either category; we created this band to pay some kind of homage to the pioneers back in the early 90s. I feel that everything has been said and done in the genre, but the real greats remain still as we speak (DARK TRANQUILITY, IN FLAMES). We are just gonna give our best to play and compose the music that we love.

I noticed on your website that you have a new drummer. Please give our readers some details about this new member. How has he assimilated into the band?

Joff: Finally we found the right one! It has been a hard time for us since Olivier, the guy who played drums on the album, decided to leave music. We tried different dudes, but none of them actually fitted with the sound that we want for the future of the band. Now, Sébastien Pilon has joined the band and I must say that its great!!! He is the actual drummer for a band called Insan3 and they are friend of ours. Seb wouldnt mind playing for both bands and I think that he has become a full part of the team right now. He contributes a lot on the writing of the next album and his skills add a big dose of brutality and power to the old songs. Im more than happy to work with him and I hope that this is only the beginning of a long collaboration.

Caress the Despair has been out for nearly a year now, has the band written any new material? Do you have an estimate of when you would like to record your next album?

Joff: We worked very hard for the past months, we wrote half of the next record already. Plenty of songs are composed and just waiting to be completed. Were gonna use all the rest of winter and spring to finish it up, and then at the end of the summer, we should enter the studio once again. We hope for a 2008 release if all goes as plan. We can already tell you that the next album is gonna be called Quiescence and that the songs are faster than the Caress the Despair stuff; its more straight-forward and a lot more brutal! Blast beats everywhere and I use more of my lower growling style on this record.

I see you have a demo disc. How does this demo compare to Caress the Despair? Where can fans pick up a copy of your demo?

Joff: Honestly, I hate our demo for several reasons! First of all, the production is weak yet ok considering our budget at that time. We re-recorded three of the four songs that appeared on the demo because we felt we didnt really give justice to these songs back then. Mournful Dawn…, Shades of Dusk and Into the Abyss are good tracks, but nowadays, I dont feel like they are very representative of our actual sound. These are long songs, almost progressive and very melodic. I loved them, but now Im tired of them! We dont play these in our set anymore. A lot of old school fans request occasionally one of the mentioned track, but hey, we got much better stuff to offers. One more thing that I hate about our demo is my poor performance vocally, very immature indeed and not very powerful. Anyway, we gained some experience. Nobody can grab a copy of it, its out of stock now and we will never re-print them, collectors item! Lol.

What are some of the tours/festivals youve played?

Joff: We did a Quebec/Canada tour this past summer with Covenance to support the album as much as we could. Its not easy for us to tour a lot because were all students and we only have the summer to do shows as much as possible. We sure wanted to do more dates because we had so much fun on the road, but we unfortunately couldnt. Well try a longer tour for the next album. Well be more prepared and aware of the life style on the road. As for the festivals, we did the Terrorfest in Toronto. We thought it would be awesome but turned out to be pretty lame.

Any plans of playing any festivals or tours in the United States?

Joff: To be honest we didnt receive any offers to play festivals right now. Like I said, we cant travel and tour as much as we would love to because of our life style. As for the U.S., we sure had a lot of fans request to come play in their town, but we did not plan to tour the U.S until the next record comes out. Maybe well think more seriously about the project, but nothing is scheduled for the near future. We hope to have the chance to visit this country one day or another.

Is there a message you would like to give to our readers?

Joff: Yeah sure, I want to thank each and every one of you who bought our cd, our shirts and supported us in any way. Were a young band who works hard and I think that our fans are truly important to us cause without them were nothing. Continue to visit our official web site and our Myspace (www.myspace.com/shadesofdusk) and dont stop checking it out, more info and updates about our next record Quiescence will come during the next few weeks. Dont forget, more brutal and more violent are key words to describe where the bands heading to. Thanks a lot for this interview.