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Artist Interviews
Q&A: Invasion
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 2 October 2009
Mixing soul-influenced vocals into classic metal, Invasion are hotly-tipped by many as the most exciting band on the UK metal scene at the moment. Guitarist Marek Steven, vocalist Chan Brown and drummer Zel Kaute spent four days in the studio earlier this year with Simian Mobile Disco’s Jas Shaw. The result was the band’s debut album, ‘The Master Alchemist’, which is released on Monday by indie label This Is Music. Currently on tour, you can catch the band tonight at Cargo in London. We spoke to Marek to ask our Same Six Questions.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
I guess I was at the crucial ages of fifteen and sixteen, hearing heavy metal coming through my brother’s bedroom wall, and I never really grew out of liking Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. There were a few good heavy metal bands that were around in the 90s, so I just picked up a guitar and tried to do something that was half as good, and never stopped.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
All our stuff is fantasy-orientated, because I’m genuinely interested in fantasy literature and I think there’s a good connection with that type of thing and heavy metal. We’re quite a purist wizard-metal band. The album’s not a concept album, but its a loose mythology that we, for want of a better word, created. In the long tradition of heavy metal and wizards.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
We don’t really rehearse that much, so it tends to be either myself with a riff or the drummer with a drum pattern, and we’ll literally write something in twenty minutes. The order seems to come together very quickly. You do tweak it during the recording process, but that’s it really. Maybe we should take more time creating tracks…
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
There’s not that much good rock and metal music post-1993. So, I always tend to go back to the classics. Early Black Sabbath, early Metallica. There are bands in our style at the moment, but the good ones are mostly American. There’s quite a thriving scene of bands influenced by early heavy metal over there, so we look at those guys and aspire to that kind of scene. But generally, you can’t really beat the masters, so that’s the only place you need to look for inspiration really.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Thanks for listening to our music, I hope it’s not too horrible. I guess what we’re trying to do is write heavy music that has something new going for it. Basically it’s pretty standard riffs put together in a tasteful way, but our vocals are quite exceptional and different to what’s been done in extreme metal before, because they’re retro soul influenced. Maybe I’d hope that the person experiencing our music for the first time like the fact that we had soul vocals and heavy metal riffs combined.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
I’d like the metal scene to pick up on us, because we don’t fall into any scene that easily. My ambition would be for us to be embraced whole-heartedly, and for there to be a non-shit heavy-metal scene in the UK, because quite honestly, there arent that many good bands that arent total rip offs. Hopefully there’ll be more bands around that we can relate to and play shows with that aren’t from America.
MORE>> www.myspace.com/invasion
