– Hello, thanks for your time. What are you currently keeping TEXTURES busy?

Showing the people our new artwork, new merchandise and of course our new song Singularity. Exciting times for us!! Everything we worked on for three years now falls into place in a few days. The responses are fucking overwhelming. Our webstore and music listening list on facebook are exploding at the moment.

– To start, what are the main musical influences for the band?

Actually from everything. From books to movies to people to ….anything going on on this planet. When it comes to music I can tell you that everybody in the band listens to everything. Kinda funny; I made a compilation of mp3’s for my trip to southern France. Starting with Lamb of God, Mumford and Sons, Deftones, blues from Etta James, soul from Otis Redding, Dire Straits, Yes, Jeff Buckley, Tool, soundtrack of Amelie. That’s representative for all the Texturesguys. It doesn’t matter which kind of genre, it just has to be good music with passion, emotion and drive!

 

– And why «Textures»?

Textures was and is a perfect name for the layered sound that we have. “Textures is 6 bands in one.” That’s what somebody wrote down on our facebook a few seconds ago. That’s a good describtion keeping in mind that we have 6 bandmembers and everybody is really listening to any kind of music. So in this way our 6 personalities are united in the sound of Textures. This unity is our sound.

The name was orginally derived from a song from one of the most progressive bands from the 90’s; Cynic. They were the first to combine jazz with extreme metal. They gave an intellectual touch to our genre. One of their songtitles was Textures.

 

– I can find some connection between your name and your usual lyrics, as they deal with contrasts. What are the main foundations behind your lyrics? How’s the writing process like in TEXTURES?

You’re totally right about the contrasts. We are fascinated by the contrasts between man-machine, nurture-nature, dark-light, physics-brains and how we deal with that. Dualism is representative for the choices that we make. Ratio or emo. Every song deals tells a person struggling with finding a state of enlightenment, of beauty or bliss. We wrote it down in a poetical so that every reader or listener has to find their own meaning in it. People have to invest some energy in listening Textures to get the highest result I guess.

 

– Your new «Dualism» will come out next September; what are your expectations?

Dominating the planet. Starting with Europe, then USA and then the rest of the planet. We are very much power-minded and we won’t tolerate any band to come close to us. No, just kidding; our expectations are different. We create music and if people gain inspiration out of that then our main job is done well. There’s no bigger compliment to a band than this.

When it comes to business expectations, that’s a different thing. We have a new, big ass recordlabel ; Nuclear Blast. And we have new, big ass, booking agencies; Ego, The Pantheon and The Syndicate. So businesswise our expectations are high. We have a shitload of shows in the near future already and we’re going to meet a lot of great bands on tour; Periphery, Tesseract, Chimp Spanner etc.

The sky is the limit with Textures and especially the first single and video of our track Reaching Home will open new doors for us. The track is catchy is not too-metal. We’re really curious how people will respond to it.

 

– And what could you say fans can find new on it?

That’s easy. We have a new vocalist and we have a new keyboardplayer. They brought along some different sounds and ideas of course. It fits perfectly into our main idea of what Textures should sound like. The voice of our new singer Daniel is stretching even further than the voice of our former frontman Eric. Especially the high pitch in clean vocals and screams.

Talking about the album itself; it has all the ingredients Textures is know for. Freaky parts, stretched out tension spans, loads of epic moment and a big diversity in music. The ingredients in the songs are chosen with great care, way better than on our previous album. Therefore the songs have a way bigger personality. It’s like cooking; you don’t have to put in too many ingredients because then the taste gets lost. It’s like that with writing music and I think we did a good job to fix you a nice dinner.

 

– Have been 3 years since this «Dualism» and your previous «Silhouettes». What were you up to in the meanwhile?

It was a really bumpy ride in between. We had some amazing times in Russia and two times in India playing for a shitload of people. In India we even ended up with a coverstory in the country’s biggest rock magazine Rock Street Journal. Can you imagine that? Textures in a rock magazine besides Bob Dyland and Rolling Stones haha. At our first gig in India 6000 people attended the show. It was like a bomb of enthusiasm exploded. Like they heard distorted guitars for the first time. What a blast.

In between there was the separation of the singer and the synthplayer. So we had to search for two new dudes. Daniel de Jongh (ex-Cilice) is our new singer and Uri Dijk (Ethereal) is our new synthplayer. Really amazing guys. They helped us a lot in our struggle to finally finish this album. You have to know that we were almost halfway writing the album when these guys quit the band. So it was a really slap in the face when they left. Luckily we’re still friends and we have respect for their decision. Textures is now stronger than ever. What cannot kill us makes us stronger !

 

– «Dualism» was recorded in Amsterdam, at Split Second Sound Studio and guitar player Jochem Jacobs took production duties. Are you satisfied with the sound achieved?

More than satisfied. All the ideas and plans that we had about this record became real. Jochem worked his ass off for 6 months full time in the studio. And when Jochem says full-time, he litterally means full time. He’s a workaholic when it comes to working for Textures. But in the end we reached the ultimate result. This is Textures in 2011 !

 

– Cover artwork was crafted by your old singer, Eric Kalsbeek and bass player Remko Tielemans. Could you please shed some light on this?

Eric quit the band in a respectfull way. He’s still a good friend of us, but he was just fed up with being on tour all the time. After quitting he still wanted to contribute something to the new album so he asked us for something to do. Of course no vocals, but since he is an artwork specialist we decided to let him focus on the artwork. The cover is made by him, the rest of the booklet is done by our bassplayer Remko. Thanx to those dudes for creating the modern lay out. They tried to make it as non-metal as possible haha. They are both fans of modern stylish artwork and they wanted to create something special. We think they succeeded in all glory.

 

– All your previous 3 albums were released through Listenable Records; what made you move? And how’s everything going with Nuclear Blast? As it’s one of the biggest labels for Metal.

The contract that we had with Listenable was just finished after three albums. We had the feeling we reached the max with them already so the step to get to a really big label was easy to make. It was really weird that at the moment we put up the news that we were an unsigned band again we got offer we could never dream about. A big handful of labels offered contracts. In the end Nuclear Blast came out with the best one. Businesswise they have the most professional way of working and the biggest network.

It’s so funny that I when I was 17 I told my mum that once we’re going to be signed by Nuclear Blast. I was a fan of Meshuggah, Gorefest and Dissection at the time, all from Nuclear Blast. It did cost some time, but finally – now 30 years old – I told my mother the good news of being signed by Nuclear Blast. She was a proud mum hahaha.

 

– Holland has always had a great Death Metal scene; but how’s the scene for more proggie/tech bands?

Actually there’s a lot of technical deathmetal bands over here. Cypher, Ichaos and stuff. But that’s not really our league. There are not so many bands who this kind of genre. Since the whole Djent scene exploded (Periphery, Tesseract etc) there’s a bunch of bands that copy their sound. Textures used to have some of those elements as well.

The overall scene in Holland is quite ok. Dutch people always try to be unique in a certain way. So we have a lot of bands creating their own sound with their own image. That’s a very positive thing about the Dutch scene. And there’s plenty of space to flourish for those bands. Holland has a shitload of good venues, we have good mags and ezines, a lot of musiclovers and the bands are treated well. A small paradise for music so to speak. It’s a pity that Holland is so small. It doesn;t really make sense if you are Big in Holland. But the tinyness of our country is also our power I guess.

 

– And finally, what are your near-future plans? Any tour to support «Dualism»?

There’s a shitload of shows coming up. Check out this weird list of facts. 30 American shows, 2 Canadian = 17.000 km’s driving – 40 days on the road – 35 hotels.

8 UK shows-3.000 km’s driving.

1 Mexican show, 4 shows in Holland, 1 Cologne Germany, 1 in Paris France.

Playing with Periphery, The Human Abstract, Tesseract, The Ocean, The Contorionist, Chimp Spanner, Monuments.

This is just more than awesome !

 

– That’s all, thank you once more for your time. Feel free to add some final words to this interview.

We want to thank Spain and all the fans for the amazing time they gave us on our two tours over there. In fact; the last show in Madrid sold out. It was the first time we were really blown away by all the people singing along the songs. Especially Awake. I still remember that. It was an amazing evening. So was the first time in Barcelona, in the Apollo. There’s some video’s on internet from that show. You are an amazing kind of people, you Spanish people! Hope to see ya soon !

 

Sergio Fernández

sergio@queensofsteel.com

 

Deja una respuesta

Tu dirección de correo electrónico no será publicada.

Highslide for Wordpress Plugin