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| Zephyra is a melodic metal band from Sweden. In 2013 they signed a deal with the italian label Wormholedeath. We had a chat with them about their new album, Mental Absolution, and more. Enjoy! |
LFdM: You recently posted on your YouTube channel your recent single "Undone" from "Mental Absoluon". Let's start from your first impressions about this single and about the sound of the new album in general.
Z: "Undone" is a very direct and in your face kind of song and we chose that to be the first you would hear from the album just for that reason. It´s easier to spark an interest with a song that is more to the point than maybe a more slow started one, and we like it a lot ourselves. It felt only natural to make the official announcement and the inial promoon of the album with Undone. As for the rest of the album, it´s very diverse with a lot of different tempos and moods. It´s not like we have an album full of songs like Undone, in fact, we will release another song very soon. And that song is the very opposite to Undone, it´s slow paced and emoonal. We want to show the different sides of Zephyra. So stay tuned for that song folks!
LFdM: Since the first listen it seems there is a great job behind it, especially with the sound. How long did you work on this album?
Z: Oh wow! It kind of depends on when you start to count actually. The very first work on the album began in the first half of the last year with the song wring process. During summer and autumn we wrote more songs, recorded pre producons and rehearsed really hard. In december we travelled to Italy and did the actual recording of the album during three weeks at Mathlab Recording Studio. Since then it´s been all about all the post recording stuff like mixing, mastering, album cover and so on. It´s a lot of work we can ensure you!
LFdM: In this track I feel a lot of thrash influences, how do you see this kind of contaminaons ?
Z: Tony, the guitar player, is the main songwriter, and his guitar style is strongly influenced by the thrash metal scene. So the fact that we have a big poron of thrash metal parts as a foundaon of our songs is only natural. But with that said, we do not see ourselves as a thrash metal band. We have a great deal of influences from various styles, as for example from power, progressive and melodic death metal. On top of that we have Åsas disnct vocals. She has a different singing style from what you normally would hear among female vocalists in metal, especially with the clean vocals. So we don't really put a label on ourselves, it´s up to others.
LFdM: Many north-european bands somemes write and sing songs in their own language and I find this really nice. Will there be something like this in the upcoming album? Could you reveal us a bit more about it?
Z: There is nothing like that on our upcoming album. We have played around with that idea though. Our last EP was actually called ’Kämpaglöd’ and that translates into something like ”Fighng spirit”. Somewhere down the line there will probably be a song with swedish vocals, me will tell.
LFdM: What's the origin of the name of the band?
Z: It´s a funny and a simple story actually. When we started the band we would have to come up with a name, and Åsa came up with the name Zephyra. Åsa´s and Tony´s dog is named Zaphira and Åsa just took that name and re-arranged it a lile bit and the name Zephyra came about. We’ve always liked it and it has stuck with us. Besides, it´s too late to change it now anyway, ha ha!
LFdM: You have a singer who goes fluidly and naturally from clean to growl vocals. Thinking of bands like Arch Enemy, Angela Gossow and Alissa White-Gluz also have amazing voices and also they come from Sweden. Do you think this aspect is a way to keep high the aenon on your music?
Z: We don´t know. You can never copy and paste what someone else is doing. Of course we have some influences from bands like Arch Enemy, especially from Åsa´s side and at a certain extent you can ”ride” on what´s popular at the moment. But if you buy a Zephyra album and think that you gonna hear Arch Enemy 2 or The Agonist 2, you are way off. It´s true that we have a poron of that in our music, but we also have a great deal of other stuff that at least we think it´s not so very common. We´re not a death metal band like Arch Enemy and we are not a gothic band like Within Temptaon, but those are sll the two main styles many people oen think of when they hear about a female vocalist in metal, at least from our experience.
No disrespect to bands that play those kind of styles, we listen to a lot of those kind of bands ourselves, but somemes you get labeled as soon as they hear about a female vocalist in a metal band, instead of just listen in on the band and decide themselves.
LFdM: Ok, now you should use all your compelling ability - In one word: why someone should listen to Zephyra?
Z: Dynamic!
LFdM: \m/
Interview by Michela
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