Interview to Vivid Remorse!

Wow! Here you are my first interview in English. It has been a very hard work for my English in progress, hence I am very satisfied of it at the end, also because the answers of Xavier are both interesting and nice. Thanks to you and now...

ENJOY THE FUCKIN' READ!

                        

1)      Hi guys, how are you? First of all, what is the meaning of the curious artwork of “Down to the Wire”?

Xavier F. Vidal, drummer: Very well, thank you! “Down to the wire” is an expression which means “at the last moment”. So this is life: something you can’t control and where most of the important things are decided at the last moment, as a blind chess game.

2)      Tell me about the lyrics. You seem to be very interested to the problems of human mind. Is it right?

Yes... we talk about things that worry us. We are not identify with massacres, nuclear bombs or serial killers, this is not our business and...Who really cares about this in his normal life? But problems, feelings... this is true, this is real and you really feel it when you sing it.

3)      Why “L’Angoixa de L’existencia” is the only song in Spanish of the album? Is it an isolated experiment?

Let me tell this is not in Spanish, it’s in Catalan, the own language of our region, Catalonia, and co-official with Spanish. It’s the mother tongue of our singer, Joel Repiso and it fits very well to the music and of course he feels comfortable singing in his own language.  It’s not an experiment, in fact in our previous album, “The seed of malaise”, we already included a song in Catalan.

4)      Musically, you play modern thrash metal combined with many melodies and other genres like death and groove metal. Who brings all of these influences?

Each one of us has very different influences: Gustavo, the guitar, composes  the riffs in a very modern way, following bands like Machine Head, although he likes a lot of things, from Cannibal Corpse to the 50’s rock’n’roll; my influences are more “80’s”, and I try to make his riffs a bit more classic. From this combination, plus the voice of Joel, who likes very much bands like Metallica, System of a Down, Pantera or Slipknot, arises our style. Joel likes also Death… so it’s hard to say a concrete influence, but also we want our music to be compact, not a mix of sounds but with own personality. We like the classic thrash metal bands, but we don’t want to follow them.

5)      What are the differences that you remarked between “The Seed of Malaise” and “Down to the Wire”? Generally, are you satisfied about the new work?

Yes, we’re very satisfied. In this new album we’ve followed our style of the first record, but we want to develope it. We want more powerful and compact songs, more variety in the vocal registers, a bit more technique and more aggressive. I want to think we get it. It’s a step beyond, with our own roots but more compact and aggressive.

6)      Tell me about the videoclip of “Imaginary Actress”.

It’s the fastest song of the record so it was a good idea to make it if we could get a video fast and visually attractive... and I think we did it. Also the lyrics helped, because it’s about a history where dream, desire, reality and hallucinations are mixed, so we could tell an interesting story. Moreover, it was shooted in an abandoned hotel near Barcelona, in an awesome location... until the Police kicked us out!

7)      Have you some funny anecdotes to narrate about the album sessions?

There are always a lot of anecdotes...notice you are in the studio a lot of hours...even you can become crazy!!! Some anecdote interesting...well, we were not sure if the bassist would appear to record his part, because he’s a sick and you never know if he’s coming or not...It’s the second CD we recorded in the same studio, Axtudio, and we’ve became friends with the sound tech and we laugh a lot with him...he’s almost as crazy as we are. It’s important people to know that we drank dozen of beers every day...you really need to record an album like this, especially the singer, haha!

8)      Is expected a promotional tour for “Down to the Wire”? Is possible some your concert in Italy?

We’ve love it, but it depends on some promoter...we’d like to get a lot of fans there and they could put “pressure” and demand us. But we’d like very much to have the chance to play in Italy, it’d be amazing.

9)      Spain and Italy are two countries that unfortunately have been really hit by the European crisis. Hence, how is play in a band in your country? And above all, how is the national situation? Is it improving, I hope?

Situation is really bad. Promoters only want the same bands, so there are a few opportunities for people like us. Although everybody who has listened the album thinks it’s amazing, and all the reviews are remarkable, it’s very difficult to play live... without losing money.