Heavy Generation Interview

Genre: Heavy Metal

Country: Italy

Questions by: Nick Parastatidis

Site: Homepage

1. Hello! How are you? How do you feel about the release of your debut album? Which are your expectations from it?

Hello Nick! We feel great, I hope you too. We are happy that finally the full length album has seen the light, we couldn’t wait any longer. We hope for a good distribution in Europe, that everything is well supported and that gives us the right exposure to start playing live.

2. The story of HEAVY GENERATION goes back to 2006. So can you tell us what motivated you to form a band? And why did you feel ready in 2018 to release your debut album?

Yeah the two founding members started playing together in 2006, that's why we attribute to that moment the beginning of everything ... it's the many bands we've played with since then that we have refined our way of playing, and the idea of a heavy metal band was born. With the passing of time and the succession of musicians we have defined everything for the best until arriving in 2016 to the current line up, with which we worked hard for the writing of our first album of pure heavy metal! At the end of 2017 we signed for the distribution and in 2018 we released the album. At the moment we are already working on the “successor” to “The Spirit Lives On”, we are like a running train and we can’t stop! It will be a great album, always in our fucking style! After the spirit the fire will come, we are very close to the five elements...

3. In all these years you exist as a band which are the moments that defined you? Were there moments you were thinking to quit trying and if yes what made you change your mind?

We never thought of stop playing, it's our life! As we say in one of our songs "Play Heavy Metal to Live" and this is what we do. Although we’ve had thousands of problems we never gave up and finally we managed to form a band where everyone knows what he has to do and he does it best, we play to send a message not to go on TV like fucking puppets. As you know, my friend, the time has come to spread the word of heavy metal all over the world, again!

4. “The Spirit Lives On” I think is a title that you chose on purpose. So what does it mean to you?

The title means a lot to us, we are very attached to the symbolism of the five elements: the first is the spirit, then there is water, earth, light and fire. It is important to live in balance with nature, with ourselves and with the whole cosmos, accepting light and shadows and always being ourselves. This is the reason for the choice of the title. Even if we are in a world that tries to corrupt us every day, our spirit can stay alive and rise up to deny all the fucking disgust that we are forced to endure every day... and Heavy Metal is a great antidote against all this poison, trust me!

5. In my opinion your sound is a mixture of influences coming from the 80’s traditional and epic metal, but how do you describe your sound to a person that hasn’t listened to you yet? Which are your influences?

Yeah, it’s true! Our roots come from the eighties. We worked a lot on the sounds, starting from our instruments that are all homemade... even the measurements of the various components of the drums and crashes are oversized, all in order to make our sound unique and powerful. Also a great help was given to us by our recording studio that did a great job of sound engineering, especially for the bass guitar...we spent many hours to find the perfect sound, but at the end we did it! Finally everything was brought to the maximum with the arrangement of the songs. To a person that hasn’t listen to HEAVY GENERATION yet we can say “Hey man, put the volume to the maximum, you gonna hear Heavy fuckin’ Metal risen from the ashes of the eighties”. Our influences come from all those groups with hard balls that have marked the history of metal, bands like MANOWAR, PRIEST, MAIDEN, SAXON, ACCEPT, RUNNING WILD, GRAVE DIGGER and many others...

6. When you craft your music do you have the anxiety of how original you can sound or do you play the music based on your emotions only?

We are very relaxed when we write, we know exactly what to talk about and how to deal with the topic, the problems arrive in the rehearsal room... there is a real war because we continue to arrange the song as maniacs until it is absolutely perfect and sounds great for each of us. Here is how a song is created in HEAVY GENERATION style, the substance is clear to us but it is on the form that we have to work! But after all it's nice if the result is satisfying...

7. Let’s talk about the lyrics. How important are they for you? What kind of emotions and thoughts do you want to create to the listener?

The lyrics of our songs are very important, on a scale from zero to ten we would say ten! Well, we try to create a music that goes hand in hand with the lyrics, we try to create the atmosphere that takes you to another dimension, and the lyrics do not have to do anything but confirm everything. We speak of mythology, of war, of alienated society and dystopia, of the deep connection between nature and spirit, but we also talk about travelling on motorcycles and of women, of course! We celebrate all this in a personal way. In short, we do not miss anything in our lyrics and who listens to our songs can easily be reflected in our words, especially metalheads, of course.

8. I want to stand a bit on the song “Path of Denial” which is a song with a strong social and political commentary of our present society. Do you think that denying what the media, politicians and religion serve you is the solution or the first step in order to better our world?

Well “Path of Denial” is our second video and has a strong message, not of protest against current society, media, religions and power, but a real denial of them. Our message is the solution to these problems. Not only the reporting of them is important, and this is the first thing to do, but the real path of denial is to live one's life beyond the impositions imposed on us by society at every level: how to dress, where to go in the evening, which people are socially interesting, what kind of women we should like, up to controlling our thoughts and our lives. The world cannot be improved if people do not improve, and the first step is to think with your own mind, do what is right and make us feel good for us and our brothers, and never give up.

9. I see many new metal bands that hesitate to speak their minds about political or social issues because they want to be politically correct and not lose fans. How do you feel about it?

We do not care about politics. We play metal music and we believe that fans respect more a band that does not want to be deployed on one side or the other, but only on the side of Heavy Metal.

10. Don’t you think that metal should be, besides other things, provocative in order to make people think?

Not necessarily, you can be provocative even with seemingly kind words, sure that metal music lends itself to this kind of thing but we will not generalize. We have made songs of protest but not intended in the classical sense, we talk about emotions and sensations that can sometimes be disruptive and destructive, sometimes more reflective and other still and limpid like the water of a mountain river. All this affects the songs, our album is quite varied, there is not a song that looks like another one.

11. Which is the heavy generation according to you?

All of us are the “Heavy Generation”: you who interview us, those who will read this interview, those who buy records and go to metal concerts, who want to think and do things with their own head and their own strength. This is the generation of metalheads that has to rise again! We are many and we are everywhere and we are ready to return!

12. I liked a lot the video clip of “Fire, Steel, Metal” which has a movie vibe. How much did it cost you to create such a nice clip? Do you plan to do more like that?

Thanks man, you're really kind! Well, in terms of energy and time it was quite expensive, but we believe it was worth it. We immediately had clear ideas, we did not want the classic video where you can see the band playing for four minutes, we wanted a story to catch the eye of the viewer and that reflected the lyrics. The difficulty was finding the right characters but we did it, and the director did the rest. We will certainly do others video clip in this style but first we will certainly do an animated video and a live report of the first European minitour. We don’t like repeating ourselves, we always want to try new things. Fans deserve different types of videos so as not to always see the same thing that is repeated endlessly!

13. I also like the cover of your debut album. It reminds me of the covers of Italian science fiction movies of the 80’s that I was watching as a child. Was it your intention to do such a cover for your debut release?

Thank you very much, we have searched for a designer so long, someone who understood exactly what we needed and I think he succeeded! We believe that the artwork is important, especially for a band that plays Heavy Metal. At the moment we are working with two designers, who have understood how to translate our messages into images... Wait to see the artwork of our t-shirt, it will not go unnoticed!

14. “The Spirit Lives On” is a very impressive album in my opinion and at the same time sounds nostalgic for the 80’s and yet has a modern day approach. Hope to see you for a live here in Greece. Please close the interview in any way you like…

Thanks Nick, we are really happy that someone like you who understands a lot of music appreciated our album! You have catch exactly the combination of eighties sounds and more modern sounds. At the moment, we are about to organize some live shows in Europe...it would be great to play in Greece one day! Heavy Metal is not dead!!!