Astra
This is the second interview
we do with this highly interesting progressive metal band from Italy and
we hope that both interviews will offer you some more insight on their
talent and their abilities.
1. Hi guys, first of all congratulations
on your newest album! I believe it will be an interesting surprise for
all the progressive metal fans.
Hi Antonis! Well, we think this is not a simple
progressive metal album. We have lots of different musical influences like
Queen, Toto, Journey, Death, Mr. Big, Van Halen, Symphony X which are not
progressive metal bands. And you can feel this influences by listening
to all the songs. Moreover, this is a concept album: it’s a story about
Mr. Bates, an egoist father who believes in nothing, and his son Angel,
who died in a road accident. In the lyrics we talk about life, death, religion,
love, sadness.... but let the fans discover these things ;-)
2. Before we focus on your album, I want to
ask you if it is an additional “burden” to be the official tribute band
of Dream Theater in Italy?
Well, we love Dream Theater and we were born
as a DT cover band. Even if now we have an album, we still play their songs
during our shows. This is not an additional “burden”. But we have a problem:
if a person who listens to the album - or makes a review about it, knows
we were the official italian DT tribute band, the comparison between us
and them is round the corner. And the last thing we want is to be considered
the bad copy of DT. We always try to express ourselves with our own personality.
We know that our fans understand this.
3. Was the album ready before getting signed
to Burning Star records?
Some song were ready to be recorded, others
were incomplete. For example, “Me, Myself and I” had no vocals, “Rebirth”
had no guitars and keyboard solos, but the structure of every song was
done. When we signed for BSR we said “ok, we have to finish the songs,
so what the f**k! Let's take our instruments and play 10 hour every day
ahahah”. In our website www.astraprog.com
you can find some clips from the recording sessions and they are also included
in a multimedia section of the cd. They’re funny :-)
4. Tell us a few details for the cover of this
work?
Aaaah the artwork.... it’s amazing! Maybe
it’s not in a progressive style at all, but we like it very much. It’s
done by Frediablo, the ex guitarist of Necrophagia and the actual leader
of Grimfist. He’s a great person and a very cool designer! As you know,
Titta plays the drums in Necrophagia, so Fred is a friend. He sent us some
photos and said “I would like to do the artwork using this style” and we
said “ok”. When he sent us by email a preview of the cover we go crazy....
it kicks ass!!! \m/_
5. Musically which is the procedure you follow
whilst writing new tracks?
We go to our rehearsal room and we say “ok,
I have this pattern” and we play a lot around that. Sometimes it happens
after 3 hours and we have an entire structure for a song! But this is not
always the truth. Some song like “Restless Sleep” or “From Father To Son”
have been written before on paper, than we played and adjusted them.
6. Do you believe that you have already found
your personal sound or do you want to progress and become more mature with
your music?
Personally I believe you cannot stop learning
and becoming mature, never, and this is valid even if you’re not talking
about music. Anyway, we have our own personality and you can feel this
by listening to the album and coming to our shows. We always try to play
better and better and to write original songs, never banal. You know, it’s
not easy, especially when you’ve played covers for four years, but it’s
not impossible, and we think we’re on the right way.
7. Have you already got new tunes ready for
your next step?
We’re writing the new material in this period,
even if we have lots of gigs so we have to rehearse the Dream Theater songs
and the ones from the album. We’ve got the structures for four/five songs.
They sound different from the first album, more aggressive and direct,
but we’re also writing something introspective. Probably the next won’t
be a concept album, but never say never.
8. How were the reactions from the press and
the fans for this work?
The reviews are very good and women fall down
to our feet ahahah. Some of the fans said “wow, I thought the album would
be great... but not SO great!!!”. Someone else said “After your concert
I was singing your refrains going home!”. It’s amazing when a fan, who
doesn’t know one of your songs yet, remembers them after a concert. You
know, we played that song one time in a concert, and the fan remembers
and sings it... we can only say “WOOOOW, WE DID IT!!!”
9. Any future plans in order to support this
album?
We’re organizing a lot of gigs around Italy
and, why not, around Europe :-D It will be a hard work but I think we can
do it. Some gigs are already confirmed, others will be announced. We think
nowadays this is the best way to promote our music. We also use internet
to do that. We have a myspace page (www.myspace.com/astraprog)
in which you can find two tracks of the album to be listened to in streaming.
10. If someone comes to a live show of Astra,
what he/she will see?
Five persons who love music, five professional
musicians who play their songs with passion and some headbanging (yeeeeah)
and five smiles on stage!
11. Thank you for your time and close the interview
as you want.
Thank you Antonis. We want to thank our old
fans and say hello to the new ones. We hope you like the album and cya
after one of our concerts!!! ;-)
Antonis Maglaras
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