Exiting Stuff

So, I sent our songs to a record company, and they replied! 

We'll be trying possible collaboration with one song first. Nothing is written down just yet, nothing carved to stone. But it seems promising. I'll tell more, when there's something to tell.

The song we'll work on was just about to be released. The only problem with it was sounds, so probably it'll work out just with re-mixing.

I already painted a picture for it, when feeling like nothing is happening, nothing is going forward. Which is not true. Something can emerge from right behind the next corner. 

Speaking of emerging, it's Emergenza-time in only a week! We'll be starting the evening, quite stressful, as I remember being in that position a lot in my classical singing days. But we'll make it a night to remember! Please join us!

buyticket.link/hatefulchains

Hypnosis

What Genre Is This?

The year 2018 has passed. It was eventful and rich, and overall a happy year for me. Much was done for the band, and something came out of it as well. We're not there yet, and might never be, but I think we are on the right track, and steadily advancing. 

We started working on our first album in spring. It's not done yet, but we're getting there. Half of it is already recorded, mixed and mastered, the other half is coming along soon. I cannot yet give a date or a promise there of, but I will as soon as the end of the process seems to be in the vicinity...

Our first video, A Night Like This, was shot and edited with the help of our friends in Videoketju. It was a first for me, except for the one done for Rautavaara X, where I played the innocent girl in white. 

We played a first major gig at Lumous Gothic Festival, Tampere in summer. The whole event was awesome, and I'll definitely be there next summer as well. Hopefully other such events and opportunities will show themselves in HC calendar. 

August was spent in warmth and sunlight, organizing material into new songs and creating wholly new material as well. The songs will be heard on HC second album, if we ever get there. We also shot material for Siouxsie on the Beach video, which has now been released on Youtube. The rest and change of environment was needed, and gave me energy and strength for the rest of the year, but I think I had not realized how exhausted I really was before the trip.

When home again, everyday life felt kind of heavy and things seemed to be at exactly the same point as before, not moving at all. But of course they were moving, because we were able to organize yet another gig in October. It was generally a success and we had fun. Hopefully everyone else did too...

Two more songs were released and they received good feedback although they didn't spread that widely. At the end of the year we also released the Siouxsie on the Beach video. Somehow it received more watches and feedback than all the other stuff before. Maybe the work done hitherto is gradually paying of. Still, some serious work needs yet to be done about that spreading issue. Maybe the release of my interview at Lumous helped a bit? Sorry, it's in Finnish. There's also Marko from Chaos Research and Jyrki Witch from Two Witches/Lumous. Listen to it here:

https://soundcloud.com/mieletontavaloa/raskausaika-xx

Last thing to happen before the year's end was entering the Europe wide band happening, Emergenza. It's a kind of a competition, but I can't really say it out loud. The guitarist threatened to leave, if I do. Seriously! No. The first round will be here in Turku  february 16th 2019. There are nearly forty bands entering the event from Turku alone, so I won't waste too much energy on hoping that we'll even get to the next round. I'll just concentrate to make the performance as good and energetic as possible, and the audience will then decide by voting. 

It's just a hunch, but I think genre will play some part in that voting too. I hope, of course, that people will hear and see just the music and performance, but it is a fact, that this music and this genre is not the easiest and doesn't necessarily speak to the masses. So what genre are we then speaking about?

I have named it Gothic Rock, which would represent the widest possible umbrella. It's just the general direction, not merely rock, but Gothic Rock. Some of our songs have that same general tone and even structure as HIM or 69 Eyes, which I consider the most main stream Gothic Rock at least here in Finland. In this concept releasing A Night Like This as our first single seemed a safe option. There is something in that song that anyone can relate to.

But then there are all the other songs, like Siouxsie and She Smiles, which represent a whole other spectrum. Siouxsie must be our most Indie song, while it's constructed like a Cure song. She Smiles is a near-metal track with it's heavy guitar riffs. But it's not typical Metal, and in retrospect, Siouxsie and The Banshees must be it's most important influence. So, we're not fully a Metal band, although it does influence our music, and neither are we truly Indie. And there are just too much basic Rock elements to put it under any other Gothic label, say Cold Wave for example.

The very thing I refuse us to be in any sense, is Gothic Metal. That term has really suffered an inflation in my opinion, and is nowadays used to describe mainly Symphonic Metal bands with a female vocalist. Hateful Chains has nothing to do with that music. The one other term that I think leads astray is Alternative Rock. That too refers to a number of bands that have nothing what so ever to do with this music. I've even heard comments that we have strong Stoner Metal vibes. All I can really say on that is that it's certainly not something we strive to do, and that I'm not very familiar with that genre either.

I'd like to think that this is Gothic Rock simply because I want to make such music, and it's the base line where I start with every song, what ever influences and elements I then take from other genres, and what ever then happens to the song when arranging and producing it to it's final form. There are some key elements which I consider the main factors of Gothic Rock and try to include in any song I make, for example, the chorus effect in guitars and certain types of vocals.

It's also Gothic Rock because most of our influences are those bands that have defined the whole Gothic subculture, from the very start, to this day. I'd like to dedicate a whole post to those bands, but to name a few, there's of course Sisters of Mercy, The Mission, The Fields of the Nephilim, London After Midnight...Then there are a few odd bands many of you may not have heard about, but are very important to me: Saviour Machine, Virgin Black and The Awakening...phew, that's a lot already!

Finally, although some might argue against it, I think the lyrics and the general visual elements around our music are gothic too. I don't mean horror elements, or fantasy, but the general feeling of something being "off" or weird in a spooky way. Some work can and should still be done to actualize that feeling even better, but we're getting there, I think. In the end, it's the combination of music, lyrics and visual, that make the whole, and that combination, I think, is Gothic Rock. Whether or not that proves to be true is ultimately up to the listeners, that is, you.

So, in 2019 we are entering a band competition as a Gothic Rock band, and take yet another step forward. Have a rich, happy and eventful year everyone!

Hypnosis

Siouxsie on the Beach- video comes out!

It will come out, as soon as I get my producer code for videos!

Meanwhile I'll tell you something about the making of:

I mentioned the song in an earlier post, describing it as a "Cure-song", which it kind of was, because I tried out that specific structure The Cure more often than not uses in their songs. That is, to start with the band playing the basic cord sequence once or twice, then introduce some keyboards, then guitar riff, then maybe another riff... This way the cord sequence gets played multiple times before the verse kicks in. And there can even be another part before the verse. But it stays interesting because all of the parts are not introduced at the same time. We ended up using only four cycles before verse, but the idea is there.

Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Christine" and their cover of  The Beatles' "Dear Prudence" were a huge influence to me at the time of writing the lyrics. As a complement and recognition of that, the protagonist of the song became "Siouxsie". To give the call "Come out to play" a more sinister meaning I put the story in a post-apocalypse world. The chorus simply describes that world with the common symbols of destruction: the black rain, related of course to fallout after a nuclear devastation,  the bloody sea, which is straight from the book of Revelations...

For the verses I came up with the idea of describing the state of things before the end in the first verse, and the state of things now, in the second. As the first line was "before it all came down, we had everything" I decided to end every line like that, to "everything", because why not? And so it became a story of our greed and selfishness, that has destroyed the world as we know it. A lamentation if you will, before the things that it laments have come to pass. Funny thing about major key, in this instance I think it actually underlines the sadness of the subject.

Spain and it's sunny beaches in August were the perfect place to shoot material for a music video, so we used that opportunity. With little experience and just the camera and a basic lens we got some good takes. The weather was windy but sunny, completely in our favour. We had a location in mind: An old Spanish Civil War- era bunker by the sea and the rocks and an isolated little cove around it. We had to climb over the tricky rocks rising from the sea to get there, but luckily there was a local guy to show us the way. 

The idea was to combine beach material with stuff shot at rehearsals. We got the editing done in two sessions. I think it came out nice: Amateur-shooting, which was exactly what we wanted, to give the impression of "Good memories on the beach" and "Fun times at rehearsals", with some colour definition to add some final touch. 

Hopefully the video will give credit to the song and add to it visually the atmosphere it aspires to achieve musically. Enjoy the sweet memory of sun in the midst of darkness!

A negative image of the beach

The Dark Times

Ahhhh, the darkness is here! That time of year when there's less hours of light and more hours of darkness, that cosy all encompassing darkness which makes all the lights shine more brightly. You just want to stay home under blankets, burn candles and read (or binge watch something). Not work. But you have to. You have to dress up warm and tight so the wind and rain doesn't get underneath it all and make you shiver. You have to bike to work and concentrate on customers (or in my case, students/customers), all the while your mind just wants to be in that warmth called home. But once you get used to it, you'll enjoy it. At least I do, somehow.

I enjoy the cold, when I'm wearing enough clothes. I enjoy the darkness, because it makes the street lights and traffic lights look like a piece of art. I enjoy the colors the trees reveal before the leaves are shed, the smells and sounds of nature going to sleep. At Halloween nearly all the leaves are fallen and it's just a matter of time before the first frost creeps over the land and turns autumn into winter. If, and when the snows fall, it will give light and it won't be so utterly dark at night. So the best time to enjoy darkness is between Halloween and Christmas. I'd say it's my favourite time of year if not for mid-summer. It marks the end, and all the work that has been done over the year. And this time Halloween also marked our third gig this far!

I contacted the local Bar (the place is called Bar), where I've played with a different group before, and asked if there was a date available for two or three bands' event. There was one the weekend before Halloween, and it was just perfect for a Monsters of Turku-event. I asked around and got Viper Arms, a formerly all-female Hard Rock band, to join us. Our drummer played in a Doom Metal band Black Sleep and he got them along as well. So we had quite a rock- to- metal evening ahead of us. There were slight problems in getting so far, obviously, because some personnel change had occurred in the bar etc, but if I've learned something about organizing, it's that it will never go just smoothly, and that you have to prepare for everything.

Like, when you arrive to the scene three hours before show time and notice that everything is chaos. No mixer to be seen, cables everywhere, nothing connected... We knew that the Bar was supposed to have it's own sound system and mics and stuff, but the equipment was scattered around the place.
So, after finding everything we had to build the sound system from scratch. That job fell mainly to those who knew something about it, so not me.

Three bands and their systems were bound to create trouble. There were issues with synth tracks and what not and I just tried not to be in the way. Oh, did I mention there was no one to do the mixing for us? So we kind of mixed for each other and that in mind, I think the results were pretty good in the end. As the first band we were the last to check and that only ten minutes before show time, a classic rock-event...

This gig went smoooothly for us. No trouble, no black outs, good energy, solid playing, and I think we had fun on stage. I had very high heels so jumping was not an option, but I moved around the best I could. Slight fatigue in my voice, noticeable only when I yelled over the bar's music. All in all, I'm very content. The only down side was the humiliating fact that we had not enough channels to plug in the acoustic guitar, which I needed for only one song, Siouxsie on the Beach. But I played. There was additional guitar in the backing track, so the song was not completely without the acoustic sound, but boy, did it feel like playback!

After our set I took a video for Black Sleep and pictures of Viper Arms' gigs. Both played well, with feeling and energy. When watching them it occurred to me that there is not a one right way to perform or do the speeches. Each band had it's own personality, a combination of the player's and singers' way of playing, moving and being on stage. The speeches between songs were all different with each band too, while Black Sleep spoke hardly anything at all, Viper Arms took time with their's and really created a warm connection with the audience.

I received good feedback. Again someone in the audience came to thank us personally, which is not self evident in this country of introverts. Our friends had also their things to say, and I will take them, consider them and use what is useful. Every opinion and like or dislike just makes it clearer that we are on the right track with this band right now.

After the show everyone gradually scattered in their own directions. I went home with a bunch of friends, and yes, the party continued the next day...

So, on behalf of Monsters of Turku and Hateful Chains, I thank you Viper Arms and Black Sleep, for participating in this event! May our paths align again in the future!

Hypnosis

Backstage

                                                   

Marveling at the disco ball