TRAVELER (EN)

-Hello and, first of all, thanks for taking your time to answer to our questions, hope you are all safe over there. How are you dealing with the whole covid-19 situation? How does this affect you as a band? What can you focus on right now? If I’m not mistaken you all live far from each other, so I guess this whole situation might not affect that much on your songwriting or rehearsals.
JP: that’s correct, we’re already used to being far away! even the boys in Alberta live a couple of hours away from each other. Right now I’m in Michigan, but I intend on being back in Vancouver, BC where I’m currently planning to live. This is also not too close to the boys, but I plan on staying for extended rehearsals, we definitely want to jam a lot more. Because of the current situation, we’re totally focused on writing the next record.

-In fact you had to go back home from the European tour you were doing in March. How did you manage to do it?
Thankfully we played over 2/3rds of the dates! We all got scattered, I had to be tested in Berlin, and the other boys ended up stuck at the airport in Paris. My test came back negative and we all flew out right before everything got shut down.

-On a more optimistic note, you have just released your sophomore album. How are you feeling about it?
Fantastic, for me personally it’s my favourite release I’ve ever been a part of.

-The cover artwork resembles a lot to the cover of your first album. What’s the bond between them both?
Well, the title track is a story that fits with Starbreaker, our guy Marvin is done destroying earth, but he’s got a few more guys to get out in space! We don’t let concepts put us in a box though, Matt’s lyrics on the first record and my lyrics on this new one both reflect a good dose of the real.

-It reflects that sci-fi element you have always had. What does inspire these sci-fi themes? Movies, books…
That’s just it, we have kind of a triple threat,Dave Arnold is huge into the great outdoors, rock climbing, but also NASA and space exploration. Any real science you see in our imagery has to do with him, as well as the title of the new album. Matt loves skating and heavy metal (and punk and thrash and death and first wave black), but digs STAR WARS and apocalyptic action. And Riffs. Me? I fucking dig smoking weed and Star Trek, especially OG, next generation and deep space nine (MINE!) So you get a bunch of stuff where we don’t try to directly reference anything, but when we write together you’re going to get something original and united.

-Considering the main current event going on in the world right now, that makes us all feel like if we were being part of a sci-fi, dystopic novel… To what extent do your inspirations also come from real life?
For me, 100%. Even the most fantasy based song from me, it’s inspired by some way i’m feeling or something that’s happened.

-Musically I’ve noticed a lot of variety in your compositions. How was the songwriting process for this album like?
A lot more collaboration, and each member going in at one hundred percent; that is the strength of Termination Shock. We don’t have anyone getting a big head because of the first record, we only want to go further and further as musicians.

–You also deliver a quite strong US Power Metal influence. What bands/albums were most in rotation during the time you were writing this new record?
I think Dave Arnold was enjoying lots of Maiden and Visigoth, Matt was blasting Deicide’s first two and Vio-lence, Toryin was getting down to a lot of Impelliteri and TNT, I was on my usual diet of Marillion and Jag Panzer while Chad is literally a human mystery. I don’t know if he’s actually ever HEARD music. We’ve never actually told him what he’s doing back there, hitting those drums. I’m sure he has an idea.

-This being said, what does this sophomore mean to you? Is a debut album more of an experiment or learning experience, trying to find out your own identity, and a second record a step forward into your very own sound?
Yeah, I mean we weren’t thinking about that when we did it. We were only thinking of putting our indivudal best into each of these songs. Now you can step back, and for me the result is I DEFINITELY feel more confident that we have a SOUND we step into. But that’s definitely not gonna make us take it easy on the NEXT one!

-Is what we find here your ultimate musical personality? Or is there always room for evolution?
Always room of course, but I feel I can speak for my mates when we all feel the work we put in to Traveler comes back positive.

-The production is also great. Who did work on it? Did you have a clear idea of how you wanted the album to sound like?
Jan Loncik! After the unbelievable job he did with our first album and Riot City, it was a «don’t fix what ain’t broke» scenario! this car rules, except let’s get some new rims, upgrade the brake system and what the hell here’s a new fucking spoiler AAAAAAAGGGGHHH!!!

-One of your new singles is a tune that was originally written for DEAF DEALER. How did this happen?
We asked JP Fortin, one of our favorite bass players, to play on our demo song «Betrayal»! this was before Dave Arnold came to join the band, and I was sitting with Matt in his apartment when we were working on the song. I asked him, «Why don’t we ask JP from deaf dealer?» because the compilation was out of Montreal! Amazingly he said yes, and we’ve had a friendly relationship ever since. You can find that song on Trapped Under Ice – Canadian Metal

-All this about «Termination Shock» being said; how would you describe it in just 3 words?
REAL HEAVY METAL.

-You are a band firmly rooted in an 80’s sound. What motivated you to form a band so purely inspired by this kind of sound? What were your goals?
When I started Borrowed Time in 2010 it was a reaction to what I felt were contrived attempts to be retro, when at the time I felt like me and the people around me LIVED records, tapes, guitars, beers and wild times. And I was raised on this music since I was 3. But obviously you grow up, and realized your whole special thing isn’t all that special, right? Here’s the deal though, each of us in Traveler have gone through all those experiences, each of us had our ‘old school’ song in our heart in different bands (Borrowed Time, Gatekrashor, Striker) while young Toryin has been shredding in the Leviatiathan/Shrapnel style tradition since he picked up a guitar! His band Hazzerd were all born listening to Artillery I think! Thus, our goal is to BE OURSELVES. and do it the BEST. why pretend? why play games? for me the best game is HEAVY METAL

– Already since your demo came out you have been receiving a great feedback for all your releases. Did you expect that? Is it inspiring?
No, we didn’t expect anything! And we try to make that the objective each time, since we’ve all had a wealth of experience playing and performing music, we know ‘expectations’ can go to peoples heads. No room for that! Hearing nice things is of course inpsiring, and we want to play in front of everyone who is compelled to listen!

-And how was the evolution from some sort of paralel project to a full band?
It feels as though it happened a lot faster than it did, but I know that’s my «fly in fly out» perspective, because Matt did tons of work getting us all together.

-In these uncertain times, what’s in store now for TRAVELER?
MORE TUNES. WE’LL PLAY AS SOON AS IT’S COOL!

-That’s all from our side, thank you once more for answering to our interview. If you’d like to add some final words; feel free to do it.
np, THANKS so much for taking this time!

Tania Giménez
tania@queensofsteel.com