Genre: Heavy/Thrash Metal
Country: England
Questions by: Nick Parastatidis
Site: Homepage
1. Hello, how are you? What are you doing or preparing
at the moment?
Things are pretty busy at the moment. We are
getting ready to release a new album – which became a two part double album at some point during
the process! The first part will be
available in the autumn this year through Pavement Entertainment, who we
recently signed with. We have also returned
from our European tour with Fairytale, which happened between May and June and
included gigs in Germany, Holland and Belgium.
2. Since this is our first interview I think a short
introduction of the band to our readers would be proper. So, when, how and for
what reasons have you decided to form the band?
It seems that I can hardly remember a time
when I wasn’t in a band. Dethonator is the continuation and evolution of the
first band that my brother and I were in, going all the way back to school
days. Both of us got into Iron Maiden in a big way in our teens and that was
it, it wasn’t long before we started trying to play it. We’ve been Dethonator
since 2009 and the line up of Tris, H, Adz and John has been together since
2014.
3. As a concept the idea of forming a band might sound
easy, but it is a group crafted by individual people, so based on your
experience can you tell us which the most important difficulties that a band
has to confront are from its first steps till now? What makes a band move on
despite the difficulties?
Starting a band is fairly easy as long as
you can find enough musicians. Getting it off the ground is harder. Keeping it
together and keeping it going is very difficult. The single biggest challenge
to a band is people. Getting everyone on the same page, having everyone’s
priorities in harmony, having everyone committed to the same goal; it’s almost
never perfect. You have to find the right guys or, at least, guys who are right
enough to work with productively.
It helps to have a very strong bond with
your band mates if you don’t want the whole thing to fold the moment someone
leaves. Dethonator is lucky to have two brothers that have an unshakable wish
to play music together to keep things anchored during the hard times. John (drummer 2014 – present) was our friend
before he joined. H (guitarist, backing
vocalist, keyboardist) has been making music with us for over a decade. Ideally, you get to the point where it almost
feels like family.
4. I think that the band’s name is a mix of words like
death and detonator. So, how did you come up with the name and is there a
meaning behind the name?
No, there’s no meaning behind the name. It
was an entirely practical decision. In an underground scene with 100,000 bands
with increasingly abstract names, we wanted one that stood out instantly as a
metal band when you read it on the lists. We also wanted something that another
band didn’t have. So that’s it really. It’s a straightforward and unapologetic,
slightly tongue-in-cheek Metal band name.
5. In my opinion your music involves many different
metal styles and manages to dwell between the traditional and contemporary
sound. So, how would you describe your sound to a person that hasn’t listened
to you yet and which are your influences?
I don’t know how to tag our music. It’s the
metal I want to hear. Your summary is quite astute. I don’t put much stock in
sub genres. If it doesn’t fit, it’s a poor descriptor. If it fits perfectly,
then it’s not likely to be very interesting in 2018. Our new album is the most varied and colourful
collection of songs we have ever made.
Some songs have a more thrash orientated approach. That doesn't make us a thrash band. Some songs have folk elements. We aren't folk metal. We have a viking metal styled
track...hopefully I've made my point!
We have a very broad spectrum of influences
in Dethonator. All the core standards you would expect; Maiden, Priest,
Sabbath, Metallica etc. But there’s a lot more metal sounds that float around
in the pot. Immortal, Dream Theater, Cannibal Corpse, Black Label Society,
Nightwish, Iced Earth, Avenged Sevenfold, Arch Enemy, Clutch, Grand Magus, Amon
Amarth, Devin Townsend, Nevermore...It all filters through somehow. There’s
other stuff too. Queen, Phil Collins, Frank Zappa, Ramones, Classical
Music…there’s always ideas that stem from inspiration outside of the expected
places. We aren’t just trying recreate the NWOBHM in this band. Melodic metal can be more than that and it
doesn't have to be boxed into a limited time period or sound. Some fans do have very conservative opinions
on what is or is not metal, but I feel that metal is pretty flexible and broad
in the scope of what it can do. You
don't have to become prog to reach outside the box either; it can be worked in
with more subtlety than feeling you need to ape Dream Theater – if that's
possible!
As much as
Heavy-Epic-Thrash-Folk-OccasionallyBlackened-Viking-Melodic-Death-Prog Metal
might look good on a shirt, it's nonsense.
Let’s just call it Metal; go and enjoy the songs and make your own minds
up.
6. “Dethonator” is your debut album which you decided
to release with your current lineup. Why did you decide to do that? Which are
the new things that you introduced to this rerelease?
Our first album got the band some attention
and support from a couple of industry parties, including BJF PR and the JMG
Agency in the UK. Then Germany's Killer Metal Records wanted it so we decided
to get it into a worthy state to represent the band. It’s been remixed and
remastered and the vocals have been recorded again.
7. How was the contract with Killer Metal Records
achieved? Are you satisfied with your cooperation so far? Will you continue
with them?
We were scouting about for a label to take
the record on and give it a home. Killer
Metal Records made us a good, fair offer.
They did a great job making a good physical product and getting the
record distributed. It’s possible we could work together again one day in the
future.
8. By the way do you plan to re-release your sophomore
album too? And if I asked you to compare “Return to Damnation” with “Dethonator”
in which ways are they similar and in which ways do they differ?
We currently have no plans to re-release
Return to Damnation at the moment. It is still available at gigs and at all the
expected digital outlets. We are more interested in new music and progressing
forwards.
The main difference between the two records
is that Return to Damnation is darker and with a greater emphasis on thrashier
riffs and technical playing whereas Dethonator is melodically sharper and more
anthemic.
9. What kind of lyrics do you like to write? Which
things inspire you to write about?
We normally enjoy a traditional Maiden-esque
story telling approach. Grand themes and epic tales. I like to keep things a bit abstracted so as
to avoid things getting too ham-fisted or literal. Actually one part of our new album will
feature a 40 minute narrative concept song telling the story of Dracula! There’s been some social commentary here and
there in our past albums but it’s not a dominant feature. And we don’t do the
personal pain/angry relationship problems thing; I've never really felt much
interest in that sort of “I feel this, I feel that, you did this etc“ lyric and
there’s a lot of that stuff about.
10. What do you want both your music and lyrics to
transmit to the audience in order to feel satisfied?
I want them to feel epic. I want people to
bang their heads and raise their horns and drinks with a smile on their
faces. I want them forget their
day-to-day troubles, abandon their weary cynicism and capture a bit of that
real magic we feel when we first hear songs we love. Because music is awesome. There's so much of it around these days that
we often take it for granted.
11. Great Britain has given us the heavy metal sound,
but after the 80’s traditional metal explosion metal seemed like dead there.
Based on your experience, do you think that heavy metal sound is reviving over
there?
There’s still a healthy underground scene.
Whether many bands truly break out of it is another question but there are lots
of bands and regular gig nights. There's
many festivals, big and small. The general trends I see in England at the
moment are the prominence of healthy extreme metal scenes and some
retro-focused, 80s-styled Heavy Metal bands.
“Modern metal” has become a bit of a dirty word. Lots of bands are often brutal as hell,
immersed in nostalgia or both. Bands are
issuing cassette tapes again. Vinyl has
really come back in a big way and bands are doing their own releases on these
formats; we are thinking about it ourselves, actually.
In the UK, there can be a division between
the fans of melodic and non melodic stuff; it can be a little tough playing on
a metal bill if you are the only band with a lead singer rather than a
vocalist. The audience has become rather
broken up through sub-genre elitism, which I find a bit frustrating. But, regardless of style, there’s a lot of
metal to enjoy all over the country if you look beneath the glass ceiling.
In a broader cultural sense, no. Metal is
not reviving, at least not like it did in late 90s/early 00s where it seemed
that a new teenage generation was evidently getting into Slipknot, Limp Bizkit,
Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson etc. At the
time I was very young and stubbornly elitist about it. “That's not metal, they should listen to Iron
Maiden instead! They're all wrong, I'm right!”. Typical young metal fan reaction, right? But, looking back, it was a good thing. At least something to do with metal or rock
was happening to a generation back then. As much as we hate when our culture
gets appropriated by the mainstream, that time and that music opened a lot of
doors and gateways for teenagers getting into metal. The mainstream and, worryingly, today's
teenagers are now more disconnected from guitar based music than ever.
Then again, metal hasn't revived because it
never really went away. In its own, separate world, there’s still an audience
for it and the youth are still coming to metal and forming their own bands.
It’s just not as prominent or perhaps as big as it once was. And, of course,
the question over that “next big thing” remains unanswered. Does it need an
answer? I'm not sure. There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of young metal bands.
They just might not last as long or play to as bigger crowds as their forebears. I do think that many of today's bands would
generally do better to focus more on writing great music, better songs, than on
what genre they want to fit, but that's just a personal opinion. Maybe that's an answer to the question; fans
should search for new good songs, not new sounds.
12. Thank you for your time answering my questions. I
wish you all the best! Please close the interview in any way you like.
Thanks for the interview. If you are reading
this, give us a listen. I'd wager you’d enjoy Dethonator if you like metal.
Perhaps, you might like us a lot.
Horns up, and never stop headbanging.
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