Een tijdje geleden reviewden we de nieuwste worp 'Onryou van de Italiaanse metalcoreband Ingraved. Aangezien het album bij ons wel in de smaak viel besloten we het vijftal enkele vraagjes voor te schotelen. We hebben een lange tijd moeten wachten op het resultaat, maar zijn blij u uiteindelijk het interview te kunnen aanbieden. Enjoy!
1.Could you introduce Ingraved to our readers?
Ingraved is a five-piece metal band from southern Italy. We like mixing modern metal with hardcore elements, playing live shows and have fun wherever our tour bus stops.
2.What I noticed when I listened to ONRYOU was that the clean vocals Ingraved uses differs from other bands. Most bands who mix screams and grunts with clean vocals end up with a high emotional voice. I read reviews where they compared the clean vocals with the vocals used by drowning pool and disturbed. Personally it reminded me of what I heard on demanufacture by fear factory. Do you agree with those comparisations? And was it on purpose that you didn’t use the standard vocals that you hear in this type of music?
Well, Demanufacture is one of the best metal albums of the '90s and it had a huge influence on Ingraved. This doesn't mean we are trying to sound like Fear Factory but you can find teir influence in a few passages, especially clean vocal parts. We do this just because we like the way it sounds, much better than standard metalcore vocals.
3.The coverart is really beautiful. It fits the japanese style which the album seems to have. Does Ingraved have a link to Japan or did you just feel it would be an original angle to give to your newest record?
We all grow up watching Japanese cartoons and reading mangas. We put our love for the Japanese pop culture and folklore into our songs and we thought the new album deserved a good artwork in the same style, oriental, modern and restless.
4.The title of the album is ONRYOU. It’s a mythological spirit from Japanese folklore who is able to return to the physical world in order to seek vengeance. Is there a reason you chose this spirit as your title?
Last years have been really hard for Ingraved. We had to face a lot of personal troubles but we never gave up. Onryou means a new rise, a new chance for us, like musicians and like individuals.
5.You’re a band from Italy. When I think of Italian bands, Lacuna coil, labyrinth and Rhapsody of fire come to mind. Not exactly bands who you can compare to Ingraved. Is Italy a good country to start a band like Ingraved? Maybe there’s a music scene containing more bands like yourself which is not known outside Italy?
There are a few good bands playing modern aggressive metal in a personal way, but yes, the most succesful italian bands are more melody oriented. According to the market this is a better way to surf the music business, but we don't care about that, all we want is to play loud, fast and with personality.
6.When looking at your label powerpain’s facebookpage, I found a picture of Ingraved who received a golden award for the video “the burden”. I didn’t found any explanation anywhere, so could you tell me what these awards are?
Yeah, it was a golden award from a German DJ's association. Our Label put us into this contest and we won it. We are proud about it, ahahah!
7.Your currently touring across Europe. How are the responses so far?
Quite good, we met so many nice and crazy people interested in the band. When you play in different countries every gig is a lesson ans we are trying to learn as much as possible.
8.When looking at the future, where do you see Ingraved in ten or more years?
What we are trying to do with this experience is to leave a mark, even if small, in the music world. In the future we'll focuse our purpose on finding a new way to mix melody with very aggressive parts. Actually we don't know exactly how this will work in so many years, maybe we'll just end up with some folk-psych-math-thrash metal ahahah!
9.As a final question: do you have a message for our readers from snoozecontrol?
Thanks to everybody for helping us in this trip, keep supporting underground music and independent labels, sincerity is a precious thing in the music business! See ya on the road!
