KING HEAVY (Eng.)
1- Hello, thanks for answering to our questions. What are you guys currently up to?
Matías : Hello QUEENS OF STEEL ZINE ,… thank you for giving us the opportunity to tell more about King Heavy. Right now, we are already in promotion process, preparing things for the release of our second studio album. It is self titled King Heavy and we are booking the final dates for our Live A.D Tour in October 2015. We have shows in Chile, a couple of European Festivals and other gigs in different European cities and countries.
Luce: Actually the last days we have given our final feedback on the artwork and lay-out of the cd version of our self titled full cd. Cruz Del Sur’s designer Tamara has done a great job on the lay-out of both our vinyl and cd. It is in line with the cover artwork that I made myself. The CD goes in production next week whilst the vinyls are already being pressed ! We presented the frontcover to the masses a couple of days ago. Our record company Cruz Del Sur sent out some electronic promo stuff through mail and uploads and we started doing interviews, like this one right now, hehe. We have released our first youtube single for this album “La Gárgola’, which will be the opening song on our album as well. I want to invite you all to have a listen and a look at it. The ‘La Gárgola’ single video features some cool pictures from our previous tour, some unreleased as well. Meanwhile we have already started working on two new songs, it will keep us busy before the tour…Oh, how I love creating new stuff, it’s always like getting a nice present when I find new King Heavy stuff in my mailbox…
-First off, could you make some history of the band?
Luce: I’ve met Daniel in Germany at the Doom Shall Rise festival in 2009 where he was playing with his former band Procession. I don’t need to tell that their gig hat a great impact on me to everybody that was present there. I was especially impressed by Daniel’s bass playing and stage presence. In the wake of the beerfilled evening we got very well along and I told him that one day we were going to play in a band together called King Heavy. We kept in touch and exchanged ideas over some years. When Daniel then started jamming with Matías and Miguel, they were in need of a singer so they’ve sent me instrumental demos for which I recorded vocals over here in Belgium and hence King Heavy was turned into an active band ! Since we all liked our demo recordings we decided to record a 4 song Ep. We uploaded one of those demo’s to youtube which raised interest of record companies. Still, in the end we released it ourselves in a very nice professional digipack with the title ‘Horror Absoluto’ because no record company was able to get it released in time for the South American Horror Tour we’ve had scheduled. That tour brought us to 3 South American countries and consisted out of 9 gigs and one spontaneous jam in Ecuador,the day after our last official gig up to date: Doom Over Quito. After the tour the EP was released as a split vinyl together by Puerto Rican DoomLord, released by French authentic metal label ‘Emanes Metal Records’. Our gigs didn’t stay unnoticed by Italian label Cruz Del Sur, one of their employees tipped Enrico and we got signed to release our new full album. It will be released in Europe, South America and the US in September. Followed by a tour in October, 6 gigs in Chile and about 10 in Europe.
3- How could you describe your sound?
Matías: Easiest way to describe our music might be that the melting pot of our different influences creates our typical King Heavy brand of doom metal, a vintage sound with modern arrangements and above all heavy riffs; the lyrics are about magic realism, epic stories, life dreams, all related by Luce’s unique perception
Luce: I roger that because I really think our music lives up to our bandname, it’s heavy and offers a royal dose of variation to the listener…correction : headbanger, because its grooves makes you move haha….
4- What are the band’s main musical influences?
Matías: Our music is like a mix between European and South American doom schools…. The principal influences are the old sound of Candlemass, Paradise Lost, Black Sabbath, Reverend Bizarre, Los Jaivas, …and for the Heavy sounds, the influences might be Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motorhead…besides that we all are playing in different other bands for years, which formed us into the musicians we are now…
Luce: I also listen to a wide variety of different singers and styles. I think I just cannot deny (and I will never will) that I like to listen to Candlemass, Reverend Bizarre…but there are some influences you might not expect at first. I have a fair amount of Megadeth albums, I’m a big Slayer fan, Celtic Frost is a favorite and even Darkthrone are undeniable influences to me. Big influences on my singing itself might be Bruce Dickinson, Ozzy Osbourne and King Diamond, all three completely different singers when compared, and for sure when compared with me, I don’t sing like any of them but let’s say they were my tutors in how writing vocal lines. When I lived at Matias place for about a month around our South American Horror Tour,a big part of his music collection made me feel at home…classic stuff like Candlemass , Metallica, Paradise Lost to name a few but also Mastodon, In Solitude…
5- How is the feedback for your new album being?
Luce: It’s not released yet, but it seems that our first full album is anticipated by a lot of people over here in Europe. Cruz Del Sur has started with the promotion of our band and album as a preparation of its release. We are receiving the first reviews now and our album seems well received. On top of that the reaction of the crowd on both the old and new songs – the new will be featured on our forthcoming album – was excellent during our South American Horror Tour. Oh, since Horror Absoluto was a limited release I’d say try to grab your copy, we did some promotion for that album but very limited, although most were sold in pre-order and during our tour. All good reactions, so I’m quite confident that the new album will be received good as it is a very consistent album, setting a new standard for the band.
6- And are your personally satisfied with the final outcome?
Matías: Sure.. very satisfied, we all work very hard on it, and our collaborators too, as Pablo Clares DM6 and Peter Maene … they all know what we wanted to do this time and how to do. By the way we know that we are getting better and better each song and with each recording process, so we hope doing the next album even better.
Luce: It’s a skullcrushing album if you ask me, and although we had put up the standards for our debut very high I think we took our sound even to a higher level with this album. Songwriting, lyric wise as well and the overall performance, arrangements and production. Very special for me personally is that I designed the cover art. I got this idea that the opening song of our album is a nice preview of the other songs on that album, so I drew the head of the gargoyle (La Gárgola), captured originally in ballpoint on the moment when it shifts from being a statue to the predator, with its head already upright instead of looking down you know…a metaphor for how our band came into existence from an idea that came alive as a real band. Like the songs on our albums change as well once their power is released onto stage and then grab the audience attention like a predator…The building in the background is from Quito, a place where you really can find a whole lot of churches, one of those churches is involved in the storyline of ‘As Dawn Broke On The Day’., The goal was to have equal quality and consistency with the work of Botarro on our debut EP (he made the bandlogo and artwork for the Horror Absoluto EP).. I think we managed to keep our new album cover it in the same atmosphere.I worked hard on it, all bandmembers gave input so my original idea of a very schematic gargoyle head evolved into a detailed pensil drawing in the end. Good thing of my bandmates that they pushed me to a higher level, we all do similar when it comes to our music and vocals. So I can say that the artwork has the same spirit as our music.
7- How could you describe this opus in just 3 words?
Luce : 3 words… oh… it usually takes me 3 pages, and as music is something which involves emotions I’d say it’s open to everyone to form an idea about our music, just follow the links and indulge in our…FucKING HEAVY DOOM !
8- How has the production process for your new release been?
Luce: After we made pre-productional demos and send those hence and forth across the oceans, my bandmates recorded all music with Pablo Clares at DM6 in Santiago de Chile and send me the files so I could record vocals over here with Peter Maene at Creative Factory.Peter was once again a great help in nailing the right notes and creating a band atmosphere for me since my buddies are living across the Atlantic. Peter does not interfere too much with the basics of what I composed as vocal lines, but he pushes me to improve them time and time again… Mixing and mastering process was handled in Chile by DM6 studio Pablo Clares again.
9- And how do you use to work on the songwriting?
Luce: It happens that the other Kings send me a demo with complete instrumental versions of new songs, sometimes it’s a rehearsal recording and on some songs the first thing I got was just the basic guitar riffs. I listen to all these different formats a couple of times, and for some songs I come up with vocal lines straight away and even the basic for the lyrics, other songs take more time. We do work a lot on the musical arrangements of the songs, so sometimes it means re-writing the lyrics as well, usually they undergo changes until I record the vocals for the release…sometimes it just needs a different story line, for the song As Dawn Broke On The Day I recorded two versions with different lyrics and vocal lines in early demo-stage…we always do everything necessary to get the best result in the end !
10 – Finally, what are you near-future plans?
Matías : Once the new album be in store, we will tour Chile and Europe, The last shows are yet to be booked. At the same time we will release a tape of our 2014 EP Horror Absoluto’, available with a new shirt. In wait for the tour we don’t rest but have already started creating new songs for our sophomore full album.
11- That’s all from our side, thanks again for taking your time to answer our questions. If you now want to add some final words; feel free to do it.
Luce : Thank you for this interview and since you give me the chance I’d like to add some interesting links for people to learn to know our band, we have released a two youtube single and an official videoclip. Several live footages are to be found as well…. Feel free to push the like button, on our FBpage and youtube releases and footage…some organizer focus on such things, so we could use all help haha… So far I don’t have notice of free download of our debut…it’s music for the die-hards, who still buy their own copy ! Just Do(om) It! Hope to see all the King Heavy’s Legions again in Chile and for sure we will be able to knight a lot new fans in Europe as well during our new tour. I hope to see you all on the road one day and in the meanwhile : STAY HEAVY , CTM WNS !
You tube single Clip for ‘La Gárgola’ (from King Heavy) with a lot of pictures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2AwBT9xy4
Official Video Clip for ‘Origin Of The Witch Hunts’ (from Horror Absoluto) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51ss4JdmIvU
Our official band FaceBook page
http://www.kingheavy.cl
