PERSEFONE – Interview with Carlos

I never supposed that I will meet metal band, which will connect the music passion with my former passion to ancient Far East… PERSEFONE… The band name associates with ancient Greece but the album “Shin-Ken” is placed in climates of ancient Far East, and concretely it is connected with ancient Japan… Well, but in order…

Hello! What was on the tour with OBITUARY?

Hi! Most probably this has been the most answered question since we have arrived at home! hahaha. Family, friends, everybody wants to know that, and I’m always answering the same: AWESOME! Really, we feel lucky. We have been on tour with amazing persons. All the Obituary guys are friendly, funny people, and it’s simply great to spend time with them. In other hand, the crew, Mon, Pedda and Julia are really incredible people and we have learnt a lot from all of them. We simply must say THANK YOU guys, because it’s the way we feel!

I think that during the tour you had some interesting stories (good or bad). Could we get to know one of them?

Of course! The most remarkable story during the tour was the problem we found at the UK borders. In Persefone, some of us are from Andorra and so we have a non UE passport. We was going with Obituary but being support means getting no payment for playing and because of that we were not considered as “professionals” in a “Being paid” basis. So we didn’t need visas to get to UK, but the person in charge forgot the rules and she didn’t let us get on UK. After a lot of phone calls to Andorra and UK embassy in London, we finally got into the UK but I have to say that it wasn’t easy at all, even more on a Sunday morning as it was. We spent a really bad time in there and we had to run to get to Birmingham on time to play the same night. We did it and we are proud of it but somebody should speak with that woman that created as a big and expensive problem…

How did you became the support of OBITUARY? You play somewhat different stylistic sort of metal?

After several years applying for different tours, we finally got on this tour thanks mainly to the efforts of our manager Claus Jensen and Lars Larsen. Teaming up with them, we have made Persefone bigger than ever and we are happy with everyone’s work. About music styles, in the end we both play Death metal, but we have added some other stuff. I think people nowadays is really open minded and don’t get stuck on an unique metal style. We have found a lot of fans on the tour.

I qualified your music as Progressive Symphonic Extreme Metal… This is the interesting mixture of death/black/power metal, which is spiced by progressive spice powder. I think that it is good idea… At present it's hard to be more original…

Yes, it’s really hard to stay original these days. Actually, we don’t have to force the situation to get the sound we play. We start searching for riffs and then we add some progressive stuff, and finally Marc starts screaming the lyrics, so, it becomes progressive death metal.

However you went on. You ladled the inspirations from mediaeval Japan. And then the newest album came into being. Why did you choose exactly the times of Samurais and concretely the movie “Miyamoto Musashi” from 1954 year? By the way -only the swords on stand remained in my room from the love to Samurai's times, hahaha…

Japan is a big and complex civilization. There are a lot of concepts to speak about but most probably one of the most interesting themes is the “samurai”. There are a lot of small nuances behind the “warrior” face of a samurai. We wanted to explain the person further than the soldier. They were very disciplined people. They always looked for the best service possible to their lords. Samurai means “servant”, so we explained part of this and how the manage every situation in life: when they fail on something, honor, the way of the samurai, and a lot of philosophic ways of thinking they had. The song Shin-ken is based on the film you speak about. We felt that it was necessary for the album to explain the life of most probably, one of the very best warriors ever in the world. He was never defeated and he left us writings with the way he focused his life and how he developed his technique. Unique person. Unique story.

You come from Andorra. Why didn't you use the melodies of Flamenco? However I'm delighted… even you could use many more Japanese scales.

Flamenco? I can’t imagine how to mix Flamenco with metal without sounding odd. To be true, the fact of being Spanish (some of us… actually Andorra doesn’t have anything related to Spain), doesn’t mean we like flamenco. In fact, there’s not much people liking that style in Spain. Yes, it’s typical from there, but we are not exactly Flamenco lovers, same as bullfights, or “San Fermín” in Pamplona. For every concept we take we like to study about the lyrical concept and the musical theory behind it.

I command Spanish Flamenco Metal Bands – BREED77 and TAIFA… Though you also contained many masterly solos among the folk melodies. Are you after some musical schools?

Most of us are self-taught musicians. We had to learn everything on the way, and depending of the tools we needed on every moment. Actually, it was a great way to learn because all the theory we looked for in those moments, has always been with us when needed. When you study music theory, there’s a lot of things that you learn and you never use again because you don’t really need it. Anyway, some years back, we have started studying music officially.

Moreover the insertions of keyboards also influenced favorably to the final effect. These also are great. How do your tracks come into being?

When we start writing a song, it’s always parting from guitar/keyboard ideas. Carlos Lozano brings guitar riffs and melodies, and I use to add some other melodies, piano parts, chord sequences. It all depends on what the song needs. We are active composers and we make music for more projects than Persefone, so when we sit to start a Persefone song, we know perfectly our role.

What does mean the title of album “Shin -Ken”? I know that “Ken” means “a sword”…

I’m not a Japanese speaker but as far as I know, sometimes they create complete sentences by combining different words. The expression “Shin-ken” means two things mainly: “True sword”, speaking about a legendary sword and “To do things with complete seriousness”. The duality of both meanings explain perfectly what a samurai is and so we loved the idea of using that as the album name.

You invited several guests during recording of the album. Who are they and what was their part?

Yes! We had the chance of working with a close friend called Manuel Corredor. He’s a writer and we always loved his writings so we decided that it would be a great idea that he would write the lyrics on “Purity”. The result is very emotional and exactly what we wanted to get from him. Later, we thought that it would be necessary for an album related to Japan, to get some Japanese artist with us. First we contacted Kumiko Kiso that she’s a Carlos’ friend. She helped us to understand what a samurai really is for a Japanese person. Finally she spoke a haiku (a Japanese poem with philosophic content) at the end of Purity. Finally, Yushi Onishi, the A&R from the label Soundholic, helped us also on all related to the Japanese civilization and he contacted Asazaki Ikue, a 74 years old Japanese folk singer. She is singing a very ancient style and she added some voices on “The fire book”. We are really happy with every guest appearance in the album.

Who is Shin'ichi Akagawa? I noticed, that he took part in recording of the album.

He is the sound engineer that recorded the voices from Asazaki Ikue in Tokyo. It’s unbelievable that “Shin-ken” has been recorded in for different studios, and that it was mixed in one another, different from the rest.

Do you know a reaction of Japanese metallers for “Shin – Ken”?

Not really… Some months ago, we received a letter from our Japanese label saying that the president suddenly passed away and that the company had been closed. So, we have no number about sales or magazine reactions (usually collected by the label). It’s a real pity because we would like to know if they have got the album with curiosity or not, since we did it with the bigger respect to their culture. We hope so at least…

You named the band -“Persefone” and it associates with ancient Greece unambiguously. Ancient Greece and ancient Japan… Where is some analogy here?

Actually, nowhere. The fact that we are Persefone, it’s just a coincidence with the fact that we have written an album related to Japan. The band’s name is just a name, and it had a direct relation with our music on “Core” since the album told the story about the Greek goddess, but not anymore. In the future we will tell some other stories, but it won’t be necessary attached to the band’s name.

Your previous albums do not possess features of any folklore probably?

Not really! Our second album, “Core”, tells the story about Persephone, the Greek goddess, so it’s a totally folklore story. About features, I’m not sure if you are speaking about guest appearances, if so, on “Core” a Spanish singer called Marta Masafret sang some female voices for the album. It was an amazing appearance!

Let's come back to concerts… What concerts will be before you?

The upcoming shows will be some summer festivals. We will be playing at the Hungarian Metalfest (Sonata Arctica, Nevermore, Lamb of God) on 23rd May and in July we will come back to Dong Open Air (Dark Tranquillity, Rotting Christ…) in Germany. Most probably we will also play some shows in Andorra.

Oh yeah… The quite good company… Do you have some ideas for a next album ? Maybe this time it will be a journey in some other direction?

Of course! We are always thinking on which direction should the band take in the future and so it includes album concepts. Unfortunately we don’t like to tell about this things so early. I can tell you anyway that the band is thinking on get on studio on early 2011.

OK. Thanks for the interview. The last words – traditionally – belong to the band…

Thanks to you for giving us the chance of answering your questions. We would like to invite everybody to check our music at our websites. We are also at social networks like Twitter and Facebook. You can find constant updates from the band in there! Keep Metal!

www.persefone.com
www.myspace.com/persefoneband